


and my heart, under my feet

by cori_the_bloody



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: All The Tropes, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, HAPPY BIRTHDAY SARAH, Mutual Pining, Post-Season/Series 02, Sharing a Bed, i can't wait for this to take me all the way to your next birthday to finish, though one character is definitely more obvious than the other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2019-10-01 10:43:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 40,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17242817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cori_the_bloody/pseuds/cori_the_bloody
Summary: “I need you to pretend to be my boyfriend!” Rebecca blurts out, eyes fixed on the window above his head.Nathaniel feels his face scrunch with confusion. “Come again?”“I’ll pay you,” she continues, “and it’ll be like a straight-up business transaction. That’d make you feel right at home, right?”Rebecca comes up with the perfect plan to get Naomi off her back after her failed walk down the aisle: pretend she's perfectly happy dating someone else.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notbang](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notbang/gifts).



> Thank you to Bethany, who got this ready on time even though I procrastinated writing it. You are selfless and kind and i'm grateful to be heading into another year of friendship with you!
> 
> This fic is dedicated to ma gurl [Sarah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notbang/pseuds/notbang), not only to commemorate her birthday but also to mark a year of friendship initially borne of enthusiasm for r/n fic. Congration. We did it.

“Couldn’t do this family the decency of staying in quiet obscurity while you work through this embarrassing crisis, could you? You had to go and make a public spectacle out of yourself.”

Rebecca’s barely opened the bathroom stall before Naomi starts in. She thinks she should be surprised that her mom cared enough to follow her into the bathroom, but it’s hard to feel anything at the moment. All she can manage is some blinking in response.

For a moment, she considers stepping back into the stall and locking the door, but Naomi could easily wait her out. She has endless stamina when it comes to guilt trips. Like a Jewish antelope being hunted by a cheetah. And Rebecca? Rebecca’s just exhausted—the epicenter of an earthquake. Both too numb to truly feel the pain of the last few hours’ events and overloaded with so much hurt, she can feel it rippling over her skin, making the hairs on her arms and neck stand on end.

“Left at the altar,” Naomi continues, clucking her tongue. “Of course _you_ would manage to drive away the simplest man in the world.”

The impulse to defend Josh surges through her and then dissipates all within a single second, somehow leaving her feeling more drained. She turns on the tap and grabs the bar soap from the fancy dish next to the overly pretty marble basin, scrubbing at the skin on her hands hard enough to leave them bright red and burning.

“And the Facebook is absolutely clogged with pictures of the two of you. You made such a fuss over this wedding, there’s no way we’ll be able to pretend nothing happened. How am I going to justify this to the family? You just _had_ to insist on him coming to your cousin’s bar mitzvah, didn’t you? I swear you never think about anyone but yourself.”

When she realizes she’s leaving deep impressions in the soap, Rebecca sets it roughly back in its tray.

“Well?” Naomi demands. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

She knows from experience that it’s a rhetorical question and any serious answer will only incense her mother further. But that certainty does nothing to temper the rumble of anger that rips through Rebecca. The restless child she carries in her heart like irritated scar tissue—the very one who’d tasted hope so pure it’d choked her just that morning, and the very one who’d lashed out against the violence of having it ripped away in jagged pieces over the course of the last few hours—prepares to throw a tantrum.

“You know what?” Rebecca says, jerking off the faucet, wiping her wet hands on the skirt of her useless wedding dress, and turning to face Naomi. Her mother crosses her arms over her chest, and something about the defensiveness of the pose drains all the fight out of Rebecca. She sighs. “I sincerely couldn’t care less what you tell everyone. Have a safe flight back to Scarsdale, Mom.”

She stomps out of the bathroom, leaving a sputtering Naomi behind her.

The grim satisfaction of the moment carries her back through the hall—workers who apparently haven’t heard the news yet bustle around her, setting up for the reception—and to the large glass doors that lead out into the yard. But just before she pushes through them, she spots Paula, Valencia, and Heather huddled together by the chuppah. Paula’s gesticulating wildly, and Valencia throws her head back with laughter at whatever she’s saying.

Though the moment would seem innocuous to any other onlooker, Rebecca’s mouth goes dry at the sight.

It’s not like she wants them to be mourning for her… Or—no, that’s exactly what she wants. She wants laughter to be banned for the rest of the day. She wants everyone screaming and indignant on her behalf. She wants the skies themselves to open up and weep for everything she’s lost.

Even as she starts to back away from the door, Rebecca catches sight of the Chans on the opposite end of the yard. They’re gathering up their bags, ready to leave, but Mrs. Chan pauses a moment to adjust the shawl around Jastinity’s shoulders and pat her on the cheek.

The simple display of maternal affection is too much. Rebecca the earthquake rumbles to life so forcefully, she fears she’ll shake the whole building completely to pieces.

She stumbles over her own feet trying to turn around and make a break for the parking lot.

“Whoa, ma’am, steady there.” One of the vested workers catches her by the shoulders and smiles kindly. “Are you okay?”

“Where’s the bar?” Rebecca asks instead of answering.

“I mean, it’s not fully set up yet,” the girl says. Rebecca stares back expectantly until she points across the room.

The bartender is organizing bottles when Rebecca storms up to the counter.

“Gimme a couple bottles of the champagne,” she says without prelude.

The bartender takes his good-ass time turning to face her. “Uh…”

“See this dress?” Rebecca snaps. “It means I paid for all the alcohol here. Champagne, now!”

Though clearly bewildered, he ducks down behind the counter and then produces two unopened bottles without a word.

Rebecca fists one in each hand and stomps off, a plan already formulating in her head. It’ll be another half hour or so before anyone gets really worried and starts asking questions, so it’s now or never.

She approaches her car and sets the alcohol on the trunk so she can fish her car keys out of the stupid, expensive bridal underwear she’s wearing and tries not to think about what it had been like to pull up to this place. But she desperately misses the girl from that morning, the one who’d wholeheartedly believed that change for the better was possible.

Add her to the growing list of casualties of the day.

Rebecca doesn’t pay much attention to the road or what speed she’s going as she heads for the hotel she’d booked for her and Josh. Her mind is far too crowded for that, thoughts of the mother she’s stuck with chasing the thoughts of the mother she could have had if today had just gone as planned chasing thoughts of _so he probably never loved me in the first place, how could you be so stupid to think he had_.

She casts a glance at the bottles of champagne in her passenger seat, tempted to chase the sting of self-pity with the gratifying burn of alcohol, but she knows she should wait till she’s alone in the room.

This is a private earthquake. The only life that’s going to come crumbling down around her is her own.

Well, what’s left of it, anyway.


	2. One Year Later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY OFFICIAL BIRTHDAY!
> 
> Thanks to Bethany, again, for being so prompt and so awesome.
> 
> Please no one get used to this chapter-a-day stuff. This is a special occasion. Tomorrow I'll go back to being the fandom's slowest writer.

“I need you.”

Nathaniel looks up from the stack of employee timecards he’d been in the middle of reviewing and approving in time to see Rebecca Bunch pushing through his closed door.

With a deep sigh, he wills himself to wake up. It’s not like this isn’t an enjoyable respite from his 12-hour work days, but he really doesn’t have the time for this tired fantasy right now, it being the end of the quarter and all. There are reports to finish and clients to satisfy and, honestly, when is his brain going to come up with some new material? It’s been stuck on this same scenario for months.

But then Rebecca proceeds to throw herself down on his couch, knocking her head against the wall with a decidedly unsexy _thunk_ , and he freezes, suddenly uncertain.

“I didn’t give you permission to come in,” he says after clearing his throat, and inclines his head toward the door in the politest _get out_ gesture he can manage. Maybe he should take work home with him tonight and fit in a couple extra hours of sleep. Seems like he might need it.

“You’re telling me you don’t even want to hear my proposition?” Rebecca asks, her voice dropping low.

Nathaniel’s eyebrows shoot up his forehead and disorientation hits hard enough that it comes with a bout of vertigo. Shifting uncomfortably in his chair, he sneaks a glance at his watch: it’s nearly 5:00. Maybe he should just pack up and leave now.

Instead of doing that, though, he closes his eyes and gives his head a jerky little shake. She’s still there, watching him with a bemused expression, when he opens them.

“I have a lot of work to do,” he says, channeling his weird panic into terseness.

“Come on, man. I’m asking for five minutes of your time. Ten tops.” When he gives her no reaction, she uses her awful old-timey voice. “I got a proposition—a real duck’s quack kind of proposition—and I need a cake-eater of a man to make it happen. It ain’t no business for a lollygagger, ya see?”

She grins at him, clearly pleased with her nonsense, and he clenches his hands into tight fists. This definitely isn’t a dream, then. Though fantasy Rebecca is stubborn, she never manages to try his patience so thoroughly.

“If you have something you need to discuss, schedule a meeting with HR,” he says dismissively. “You should have a direct line to Macintosh by now, right?”

The smile slips off Rebecca’s face at the mention of the Plimpton home office’s HR department director, but she stays rooted in place.

“Seriously, dude?”

“I asked you to leave,” Nathaniel says, pointedly returning his attention to the timecards.

“I can’t believe you’re still mad about that. It’s like, every time I think your ego couldn’t possibly be more fragile, you surprise me,”

He bites the inside of his cheek to keep from snapping and signs off on Jim’s work hours without checking them.

“Honestly, my mom has 100-year-old Garfinkel china that got banged up on the trip to America that’s more fragile than your ego.”

“You want to talk about fragile egos?” Nathaniel slams down his pen. Shame that he’s letting the needling get to him is already congealing into a sticky ball in his stomach, but his irritated words come too fast to stop. “I’m not the one who threw a fit after getting fired for not showing up to work for _weeks_ just because I was left at the altar by a total loser.”

Rebecca’s jaw clamps shut around a mirthful laugh, and the hurt look she shoots him makes the shame ball curl uncomfortably tight. He sits rigidly still, though, keeping the muscles in his face composed.

“I can’t believe I thought you were the right person for this,” she says, clearly speaking to herself even though she practically yells the words at him. Before he can so much as blink, she’s pushed up off the couch and stormed back out of the office.

Nathaniel lets out a sigh of relief when the door falls shut behind her.

It’s not that he’s proud of how that transpired. Quite the opposite. But anything that maintains distance between him and Rebecca Bunch is good for his sanity. He has the tendency to act—how had his father put it after the private jet incident—like ‘a pansy schoolboy’ where she’s involved.

As it is, the foolish little allowances he makes for himself—glancing up to watch every time he catches her walking past his office toward the break room, orienting himself around her in every room, and his most pitiful offense, lingering in his coffee preparation whenever someone’s gossiping about her—are too close to feeling like intimacy. The stunt she’d pulled, going behind his back to Macintosh and his father and the resulting coolness between them, actually feels—he begrudges admitting, even in the privacy of his own head—like she’d done him a favor some days.

“Okay, look,” Rebecca says, pushing back through his door and making him jump. “I’m sorry for taunting you and for snapping. I have extra trouble regulating my emotions in stressful situations, but I shouldn’t have taken my stress out on you.”

He blinks at her.

“Don’t you have something you want to say to me?” she asks, raising her eyebrows expectantly.

Before he can piece together some kind of response through the whiplash, Maya pokes her head into the office.

“Um, sorry to interrupt, sir, but it’s almost 5:30. Did you want me to stay until you’re done looking over payroll or…?”

“I’ll send the final reports to accounting myself, Maya.”

“You’re a lifesaver,” Maya says with a sigh of relief, and Nathaniel nods, assuming she’ll understand that she’s being dismissed. But then she sucks in a big breath and continues, “My favorite YouTube makeup artist is doing a live Insta right now, and the Wi-Fi here sucks. So I’m definitely gonna have to rewatch the beginning but if I leave now maybe I can catch the end and ask my question about—”

“Maya!” Nathaniel’s shout cuts her off mid-rant. “Just leave.”

“Right,” she says, giving him and Rebecca a meek wave before scurrying off.

He takes a moment to rub the tension out of his temples before returning his attention to Rebecca. “I don’t want your apology.”

She crosses her arms over her chest, looking for a second like she might argue. But then she shrugs. “Fine then. I’m not sorry.”

“Good. Neither am I.”

“Great.”

“Alright then.” He picks his pen back up.

“So are you finally ready to hear why I need you?”

He drops the pen back onto his desk.

She claps, taking that as an invitation, and sits down across from him. “My mother just informed me that she’s going to be visiting for the holidays.”

“Good for you,” he says. “Take all the time off you need or whatever it is that’s going to get you to leave me alone.”

“No,” Rebecca says, leaning forward and slapping a palm over the stack of papers on his desk just before he can refocus on them. He glares at her but refuses to move it out of the way. Touching her would feel like…like letting her win somehow. “It’s not good for me. Naomi hasn’t talked to me since—well. You know.”

“Since your disaster of a non-wedding?” he supplies helpfully.

“She thinks I embarrassed her,” she says, her mouth twisting into a grimace.

“That’s ridiculous,” Nathaniel says. Rebecca looks at him with surprise until he adds, “If you embarrassed anyone, it was yourself.”

“Can you try not to be a smarmy dick for at least five seconds?”

“If I say no, will you finally take the hint and go?”

She quirks an eyebrow at him, and he hates his stupid stomach for reacting to such a little, meaningless gesture.

“What do you think?” she asks.

Rolling his eyes, Nathaniel surreptitiously scoots his chair a couple inches back from his desk, adding a bit more distance between them, and crosses his arms. “Continue, but make it quick.”

Her responding smile is triumphant, and he hurriedly makes a show of checking his watch, averting his eyes before the charm of it can hit him full-force.

“Oh, my god,” she says. “Are you honestly telling me you’re _that_ eager to sit alone in your office doing paperwork all night? Where’s your sense of intrigue? Where’s your adventurous spirit?”

He mimes gagging, and she grabs a pad of post-it notes off his desk and lobs it at him. It hits him in the chest and falls into his lap.

“One more attempt to stall,” he says, tossing the pad back, “and I’m going to rehire George to station him outside my door 24/7. His only job will be to stop you from coming in.”

“Okay, well, that sounds more like a punishment for you than it does for me.”

Though he’s able to hold back his laughter, he can feel his mouth curl up into an involuntary smile. He tries to quickly school his features back into a stern scowl, but it’s too late. She’s noticed, and offers him a pleased grin in response, happy to have amused.

For a moment, Nathaniel’s transported back in time to the night they were stuck in the elevator, to the discovery of mutual interests and easy conversation. Tension he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in his shoulders eases suddenly, and, after just a moment of hesitation, he gives himself over to the smile.

They stay like that, frozen with nostalgia and grinning at each other like idiots, for a prolonged beat.

She seems to remember that feelings from the past have no place in their current relationship at the same time he does, and they both cast their eyes around the room, looking for anything else to focus on.

“I need you to pretend to be my boyfriend!” she blurts out, eyes fixed on the window above his head and hands twisting the pad of post-its.

He feels his face scrunch with confusion. “Come again?”

“I’ll pay you,” she continues, “and it’ll be like a straight-up business transaction. That’d make you feel right at home, right?”

He hears himself stammering, but can’t seem to stop himself or form a complete sentence. The thoughts in his head trip over themselves vying for his attention, and he feels dizziness overcome him for a few moments. Finally, he manages to say, “You want to pay me to take you out on a date? That sounds—”

The ‘like hell’ gets lodged in his throat, but thankfully Rebecca doesn’t notice the hesitation. She’s too busy speaking over him. “No, no, no. Not a date. You’d _pretend_ to be dating me. It’s, like, an appearances thing. And it’s just for the holidays.”

“That’s…”

“A brilliant way to get Naomi off my back?” Rebecca suggests.

“The stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

She starts to pout—seriously pout: all big, round eyes and jutting lower lip—and Nathaniel stands abruptly to cross to the carafe of scotch he keeps in the office. It only occurs to him after he’s thrown back a healthy measure that alcohol probably isn’t the best factor to add to this increasing insanity.

His lips pressed tight, he pours himself another glass.

“I don’t need money,” he says when he turns back to her.

Her whole face scrunches. “What does…does that mean you’re going to do it?”

“It means,” he says, leaning against the window, “you need to come up with a better incentive if you want me to even consider this ridiculous proposal.”

She raises her eyebrows, watching him closely, and he takes a leisurely sip of the scotch, pretending not to notice or care.

“What would you want?” she asks finally.

_To know everything you and my father said about me when you contested being let go_.

He bites his tongue to keep from saying the pathetic truth. If Rebecca Bunch needs him—and he’s certain she wouldn’t be asking him for a favor if she didn’t—then he has leverage over her. And it’s been quite a long time since he’s had the upper hand where she’s concerned. He’s not about to give it up that quickly. No, he has to do his due diligence on this.

“That depends.”

“On?” she asks, clearly annoyed that he’s making her draw it out of him.

“What would all this entail?”

She averts her eyes and shifts in her chair, clearly nervous. That’s good for him, he thinks.

Or possibly bad.

He takes another swig of his drink and is dimly aware of the way the frantic misfire of thoughts morphs into a slow churn.

“Well, it’d require a public declaration that we’re dating. Near future would probably be best. The further back in time there’s evidence of a relationship, the less skeptical she’ll be. Which means we’d have to stage some regular social media content in the couple months we have until she actually comes to town.”

Nathaniel’s eyebrows creep higher on his forehead. “Sounds like you’ve put more thought and energy into this than you ever put into your work.”

She throws her hands up, exasperated. “Well, this is Naomi Bunch we’re talking about! The woman kept a secret food diary of everything I ate from the ages of 12 to 17, which is when I accidentally stumbled upon it and threatened to skip summer mock trial the second year in a row unless she stopped because it was scary accurate. The woman knew every school and midnight snack I had. I have to put the work in if I want her to buy it.”

“Wait, she did what?”

Rebecca makes a You-Heard-Me face.

He sighs. “Okay, so she’s—”

“Obsessed?”

“—overly attentive. That only begs the question: why even bother with such an elaborate ruse in the first place? Sounds like the risk might outweigh the reward.”

Her expression clouds over. “Look, if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not get into it. Let’s just say I know my mom and I know what she wants my life to look like. If I can pretend I’ve achieved even a small fraction of that, she’ll go back to her regularly scheduled nagging instead of this cold, disapproving thing she’s got going. I feel comfortable with the nagging, I miss the nagging. I _need_ it back.”

He tries not to notice how familiar her desperation feels to him, but the alcohol has made him a little too loose. He swallows hard.

“How long is she going to be in town?”

“A week,” Rebecca says eagerly, as if she can tell he’s ready to cave.

That isn’t a very long time, and he’s not sure if he feels relieved or a little slighted by that revelation. He frowns at himself.

“I have one more question,” Nathaniel says.

“Before you agree to do it?” she asks, waggling her eyebrows.

He grits his teeth against the urge to smile. “Not necessarily.”

“Always so coy,” she says under her breath, but he hears anyway.

He feels a twinge of pride at the base of his spine at her accidental reassurance that he’s done a decent job keeping his true feelings controlled and out of sight. It causes him to stand a little straighter.

Louder, she says, “Well?”

He lets out a slow exhale, composing his expression and looking her dead in the eye as he asks, “Why me?”

Her impish laugher rings through the office, and he resists the urge to cringe. 

“My mom’s gonna love you, but in a way that’s gonna totally annoy her. And that’s exactly what I’m looking for.”

A heavy, lead ball of disappointment drops from his throat into the pit of his stomach, but he clenches up against the feeling, pretending it doesn’t register at all. It’s a reasonable answer, after all. Just not what he’d been hoping for. Because… “I’m sure there are others who could accomplish the same effect.”

“Yeah, probably. But…”

His hope claws its way back up into his chest, and he barely breathes at all through her dramatic pause.

“I know we have chemistry, and that’ll help sell it.”

“I see,” he says, pleased with how completely bored he sounds despite the way his heart has started pounding in his ears.

“Plus, I don’t like you, and I know you don’t like me. So there’s zero chance it’ll actually feel romantic.”

He feels his racing heart trip and stumble, but he still barely misses a beat in saying, “And that’s exactly what you’re looking for.”

She gifts him with one of her triumphant smiles, and he feels absolutely no urge to return it.

“ _Exactly_ ,” she says, tapping her nose like he just won their game of charades. If only. “So you’ll do it?”

Just a minute ago, he thinks he might have agreed just to see how big he could make her smile. But this is a delicate game, and he suspects the second he gives in, he forfeits his hand. So he gives her his best coy smile instead.

“I’ll think about it.”

###

Rebecca pokes her head into his office the next day. “You wanted to see me?”

“Come in,” Nathaniel says, gesturing for her to have a seat.

“Is this about…?” She trails off, but her hopeful expression finishes the sentence for her.

Thankfully, he’d spent the night schooling himself into a careful indifference regarding the whole, weird situation, and he feels nothing at all in response to her wide, sparkling eyes. Agreeing to help is merely a prudent business move. It in no way means he’s getting sucked into the drama and whimsy of Rebecca Bunch’s life.

“It is,” he confirms, matter-of-fact.

“Oh, thank god.” She collapses into the chair across from him, dramatically clutching a hand to her chest. “I thought you might try to keep me in suspense as some dick-wielding power play or something.”

“Charming.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “ _Are_ you gonna keep me in suspense just to wield your dick around?”

He gives her a tight grin, pulls a file out of the top drawer of his desk, and drops it in front of her with a satisfying _plop_ instead of commenting.

“What’s this?”

He shakes his head. “I know you’re grossly incompetent, Bunch, but I at least have faith that you can read.”

She sneers at him and flips open the folder. After just a couple seconds, her head snaps up. “A service contract? Are you serious?”

“This is a straight-up business transaction, is it not? Seems only wise that we have everything in writing.”

She rolls her eyes at his use of her own phrasing but silently goes back to poring over the document. As expected, her head snaps up a few seconds later. “You want an unspecified favor as compensation?”

“Cashed in whenever I see fit, no questions asked.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“And what you’re asking of me isn’t?”

She sputters for a few moments before pushing to her feet. “You know what? Fine. But I’m not signing this yet. I need to do my due diligence.”

“Take all the time you need,” he says coolly, turning back to his computer. “It’s not my mother that’ll start poking holes in my absurd stories if we don’t get my harebrained scheme underway soon.”

“Yeah, well…your wrists look extra pudgy today,” she says before sweeping out of the room.

He has to count down from 20 and take several deep breaths to keep himself from giving her the gratification of checking just in case.

###

“For your review,” Rebecca says, storming into his office after-hours and dropping a freshly printed contract in front of him.

“I’m surprised you’re still here,” he says, not looking up from the case notes he’s reviewing. “The traditional workday ended an hour ago. Aren’t you usually leading the stampede to the exit?”

“Yes, because I’m not a weird robot whose entire identity revolves around my job.”

Maybe it’s because of the strained conversation he’d had just an hour earlier with his father about a case Tim lost that’d displeased a high-profile client, or maybe he’s just sick of the Whitefeather lackeys not taking their jobs as seriously as they should. But Rebecca’s comment ignites his temper, and he turns a snarling smile on her.

“Right, because you’re the kind of weird robot whose entire identity revolves around men who don’t love her.”

Her mouth pops open and her expression morphs from neutral to hurt to positively murderous in just a few short seconds. She reaches out to him with one tight fist, which shivers between them with the force of her emotion for a tense moment before she pulls it back to her side. Then, she takes a deep breath and turns on her heel.

He returns his attention to his work, a sick sense of victory warring with shame for losing grip on his own stupid emotions.

After only two steps toward the door, though, she pauses. “You know, you’d be so much easier to get along with if you didn’t have to win every goddamn time. But, whatever, maybe that’s the whole point, right?”

The part of him he’s losing more and more control over wants to protest, wants to throw a fit like a petulant child as she goes to take her leave, but—because that part of him hasn’t won yet—he manages to restrain himself, every muscle clenched as he watches her, watches the way the tension leaves her shoulders as soon as his door swings shut behind her.

_Wrong_ , he thinks to himself. _She’s wrong_.

Her accusation absolutely does not resonate, and he doesn’t care what she thinks, anyway. It’s nonsense. She knows nothing about him.

Total garbage nonsense offered by a woman who’s clearly unhinged.

His eyes slide to the contract still sitting on his desk, but his gaze remains unfocused as his mind wanders lazily over the past year, Rebecca’s words bouncing stubbornly around the memories.

As usual, his brain doesn’t cast its spotlight on any of the personal records he broke at the gym or the huge triumph that was the California Pizza Kitchen franchise case or even the birthday dinner Darryl insisted on buying him despite his protestation that actually turned out to be kind of fun (…not that he’d told Darryl that). No, his mind is intent on one thing and one thing only.

With a wary sigh, Nathaniel picks up the contract.

###

To say he’s surprised that she’s still at her cubicle when he pokes his head out of his office ten minutes later would be an understatement. She _does_ seem to be packing up to go, but still. It’s well past 6:30.

“Hey,” he says gently, approaching her desk. She freezes in the middle of stuffing a stack of file folders into her briefcase but otherwise doesn’t acknowledge him. He clears his throat. “Can we, uh—I’d like to discuss addendum B, if you have the time.”

She turns to face him, dropping the bag onto her desk once all the papers are inside. “What about it?”

“It’s just—I’d really rather not give, ahem, people at this company the impression that I’m open to dating employees.”

He takes her raised eyebrows as confirmation that she knows exactly who he means by _people_ , but she does him the courtesy of not calling him out. The kindness only makes his stomach clench with guilt.

“Dude, you realize that by agreeing to this, we’re gonna _have_ to give people the impression that we’re dating, right? That’s, like, the whole point.”

“No,” he says, holding up a finger, “the point is to give your mother the impression that we’re dating. I don’t see why we can’t leave our professional lives out of it entirely.”

She eyes him for a second, and, if he’s not mistaken, there’s a faint smile playing on her lips. “So, like, I totally appreciate your commitment to compartmentalization. I’m with it. I get it. But,” she cocks her head at him, “if I could hit you with a counterpoint: some of the people here have an equally intense commitment to being invasive little shits. Especially when it comes to your personal life, specifically because you’re so tightlipped about it.”

Nathaniel frowns.

“So you see my point.”

“Unfortunately.”

“Which means people here will find out. And if we want to avoid a big, unnecessary scandal, we file paperwork with HR now.” She finishes with a flourishing gesture to the contract.

He’s silent for a moment, scanning her addendums again. Then, he lets out a long breath through his nose. “You’re right.”

“I’m sorry,” Rebecca says, cupping her hand around her ear. “What did you just say?”

He resists the urge to roll his eyes. He owes her this, after all. At _least_ this. “You are right.”

“Whoa. That was, like, way easier than I thought it was gonna be.”

“Well, you can be very persuasive when you want to be.”

She shrugs off his comment with affected modesty, but he can see she’s softened a little by the compliment.

It gives him a confusing sense of secondary pleasure, having made her happy, and before he can think himself out of the urge, he adds, “Besides, it’s like you said. I don’t have to win _every_ _goddamn_ time.”

The line has its intended effect: she thaws completely, a goofy smile overtaking her face.

He coughs lightly and attempts to avert his eyes, but his gaze is drawn back to that damn smile—clichéd moth to the clichéd flame.

“So, we’re doing this?” she asks, not looking away as she leans over her desk to grab a pen. She clicks it open and holds it out to him.

Though he’s spent the last 24 hours cataloging every way in which this is a terrible idea, practically making himself sick with the possibility for mishap, he doesn’t hesitate grabbing the pen.

“We’re doing this,” he agrees.

He feels her watching him as he signs his name.

The weakness in his knees is definitely due to the fact that the granola bar he’d had for lunch was nearly expired, he decides.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pacing? What's that? I alternate between 5,000 and 12,000 word chapters with no rhyme or reason.
> 
> Thank you, Bethany, for your careful read of this monster of a chapter.

The rough pounding on his front door nearly causes Nathaniel to jump out of his skin, and he has to take a steadying breath before pushing off the floor and stepping around the dozens of texts he has lying open around him.

He’s not expecting anyone on this quiet Saturday afternoon, so of course he shouldn’t be surprised that it’s Rebecca waiting outside when he glances through his peephole.

“How do you know where I live?” he asks before he’s fully opened the door. “Wait, better question. Why—uh, who’s this?”

“Oh don’t mind me,” the girl with Rebecca says, examining her nails. “I’m just the transportation. Apparently.” She looks up at him then, her bored expression doing nothing to dampen the effect of her unnervingly shrewd stare. “Hey, you’re a big-shot lawyer or whatever. Do you think if I wrote the State of California about how their license restrictions are inconveniencing me, personally, that they’d—?”

“Thank you, Heather!” Rebecca says so loudly that it echoes through the hall. “That’s enough of that.”

Heather sucks her bottom lip into her mouth and regards Rebecca for a beat before saying, “So you’re gonna pretend to date this man, but you don’t want him to know about the time you—”

“Heather!” It’s basically a growl this time.

“Okay.” Heather holds up her hands in surrender. “I’m just saying, there’s a decent chance it’ll come up.”

“You-you told her about the…?” Nathaniel asks Rebecca, not even attempting to make sense of whatever else they’re talking about.

Before Rebecca can respond, Heather says, “I’m her roommate, so.”

“We need her to help sell it,” Rebecca says, leaning in to fake-conspiratorial whisper. “So, you gonna invite us in or what?”

Nathaniel, still baffled and half a step behind, lets the door fall all the way open. He regrets it immediately when Rebecca pushes past him eagerly.

“What’s going on here?” she asks, crouching down to get a better look at the books on his floor.

“Just reviewing some finer points of the local law,” he says, lunging for the texts. He quickly tries to shove folders between the pages to mark his spot before she can go messing with any of them, and then stacks them out of the way on his leather arm chair. “I have a court date for the Crestfield account next week.”

“Wow,” she says, standing back up and shaking her head. “Work is literally the only thing you do, isn’t it?”

He doesn’t like the way Heather is squinting at him from the doorway to his bathroom—apparently already making herself at home—or how the tone of Rebecca’s voice is dangerously close to pity.

“Are you going to tell me what you’re doing here?” he snaps.

“Oh right! I got an email from HR—they’re finished processing the paperwork.” When he doesn’t react, she holds up her hands and starts wiggling them, mouth wide open with a painful looking smile. “We’re in the clear! It’s on like Miss Saigon! Oh hey, that’s good. I should write that down.”

“Who’s Miss Saigon?” Heather asks, and his head whips around to find she’s made her way over to his liquor cabinet.

“Oh, my god, Heather,” Rebecca says, and for one delirious second, he thinks she’s about to reprimand her friend for being so blatantly rude. But instead, she says, “You’ve never heard of the thirteenth longest running Broadway show?”

Heather blinks at her. “Should I have?”

Before she can launch into a monologue, Nathaniel clears his throat. “I saw the email. That still doesn’t explain what the hell you and your nosy roommate,” he casts a pointed look at Heather, “are doing here.”

Heather crosses her eyes at him and goes back to uncorking and sniffing at every bottle of alcohol he owns. He gets a small amount of vindication when one of them makes her gag.

“Um, duh,” Rebecca says, snapping in his face to reclaim his attention. “We have to get going on our announcement that we’re in a relationship!”

“Just change your relationship status on Facebook,” he says.

“I mean, I did.”

“Great. Get out.”

“No,” she says, swatting down his hand as he gestures toward the door. With a sigh, he walks over to the couch and sits down. “It’s not good enough. I wasn’t even able to tag you.”

“I don’t use social media—it’s a productivity suck.”

Rebecca rolls her eyes. “Of course you feel that way. Your life is too boring to share with other people, anyway.”

Nathaniel closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose, breathing through the urge to yell.

“At least Mr. Soulless Automaton over here is living his authentic life, however dull it may be,” Heather says.

Rebecca turns sharply to glare at Heather. “You’re supposed to be on my side. Also, you promised to stop criticizing my plan.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Could you?”

Heather scrunches up her face in thought before shaking her head. “Mmmm, no.”

Rebecca turns back to Nathaniel, eyebrows raised and expression pleading.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he says. “You already know I think it’s a terrible idea.”

“Yet you agreed to it anyway,” Heather says, watching him with that too-sharp look in her eyes again.

He scoffs. “So did you!”

She shrugs and ambles over to his bookshelf. “What can I say? I’m a slave to the drama, and I wanna have a front-row seat when this whole thing blows up.”

“It’s not going to blow up,” Rebecca says with a petulant whine, flopping down beside Nathaniel on the couch.

He shifts closer to the arm, putting as much distance between them as he can, feeling Heather’s weighty stare on him the whole time.

“Okay, so whaaaat happens when your mom buys everything and expects you two to, like, get married and have a horde of emotionally stunted children?”

Nathaniel swings his head around to look at Rebecca, who scoffs and waves the question away with a flick of her wrist.

“That’s not going to be a thing.”

“That is not a real answer,” he says.

“It’s fine!” she says, voice tight. “I know my mom and I know what she wants and it’s fine. I just have to show her I have my life together, and it’ll be fine.”

Nathaniel blinks, and she plasters a too-wide smile on her face. He tries not to look too disgusted as he turns to Heather. He’s not sure what he expects from her, exactly, but it’s definitely not ignoring both of them entirely in favor of running her finger along the spines of his books. She’s the one who asked the question, after all.

“Oh, don’t look at me,” she says, making him jerk with embarrassing surprise. “That’s been her mantra ever since she came up with this terrible idea. I don’t think you’ll get anything even close to resembling logic at this point.”

“Shut up, Heather!”

“Yeah, fine, you can drive yourself over here next time.”

“There’d better not be a next time,” Nathaniel says sternly.

“There definitely will be,” she says.

“You can’t just show up whenever you want. We’re not actually dating.”

Her eyes widen like he just gave away a juicy secret, and he clamps his jaw shut painfully hard.

She waggles her eyebrows. “Fine, I’ll call from the parking garage next time. Give you a minute’s warning.”

He lets out a noisy sigh, about to volley, when Heather says, “Wait, is this a zoology textbook? And a tropical fish manual?”

“Okay,” he says, pushing to his feet. He grabs Rebecca’s upper arm to tug her toward the door. “Time for you guys to leave.”

“But wait,” she says, wriggling out of his grasp. “I need a picture.”

“Of what?”

“The two of us!” Before he can ask why, she whines, “Because I can’t tag you in my status update, but I have to let people know you’re the one I’m dating somehow!”

He glances over at Heather, who’s pulled the fish manual off the shelf and is leafing through it. He resists the urge to stomp over and snatch it from her hands, instead making a ‘go ahead, if you must’ gesture at Rebecca.

When she takes a step toward him, though, he takes an involuntary one away from her.

“You realize the whole point is for you to be in the picture, right?”

“Yes,” he says, gritting his teeth against the rest of the caustic remark that nearly slides off his tongue and casting a quick eye around the room. In an attempt to cover the weirdness, he adds, “But we’ll, uh, never make it in the same frame. Come sit back down.”

Facing away from her, he breathes out some short-lived relief before folding himself down onto the couch. Then, before he has the chance to realize her plan and stop her, she’s plopping down into his lap.

“Perfect,” she says, letting her back fall against his chest and holding her phone up over her head.

Nathaniel goes perfectly still, channeling all his energy into trying not to notice how warm her thighs are or that the weight of her is not as unpleasant as it should be. His hands twitch, suddenly far too eager to record how she might respond if he were to wrap an arm around her middle and hold her against him.

“If you say so.” The quip comes out of his too-dry mouth flat and unconvincing.

“Are you going to smile?” she asks, fitting her cheek against his.

“Unlikely,” he says stiffly.

He sees her roll her eyes in their mirrored images on the phone and then fix a warm grin on her face. She snaps a couple pictures before he loses a modicum of control over the muscles in his cheeks and softens in response to her smile.

When he catches himself, he snaps, “I think you’ve taken enough.”

“Wait, wait,” she says, adjusting herself. He holds his breath. “One more.”

“Fine. As long as the two of you leave immediately after.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she says, setting the phone in her lap so she can sweep her hair over one shoulder. It’s gotten long, he realizes, and it smells strongly of something distractingly feminine.

He snatches up the phone and holds it at arm’s length. “I think you’re more than ready.”

“Aww, thanks,” she says teasingly, and her voice is so close to his ear he almost shivers.

“Not what I meant,” he says, frowning.

“Jeeze, will you just take the picture already? I’m trying to get out of this dreary apartment.”

He frowns even harder and clicks the camera button. At the last second, though, Rebecca goes to bite him, her teeth scraping softly against his stubbly jaw. He twitches, the sensation making him emit a sound far too close to a squeal for his peace of mind, and Rebecca laughs into his cheek.

She grabs the phone away from him before he can make much sense of the resulting picture.

“That should do it,” she says, way too smug, and slides off his lap.

“What the hell was that for?”

“The outtakes reel,” she says. When he glares at her, she adds, “Hey, just be happy that wasn’t a video. It would do wonders for that steely man-sona you’ve got going if people found out you’re ticklish, wouldn’t it? Or that you make funny noises when you’re being tickled.”

He goes to lunge for her, and she practically dances to the door.

“Heather, we’re leaving!”

“Yeah,” she says, sounding completely bored. But she turns back to Nathaniel at the last second. “If you do end up building your dream aquarium, let me know. I’ll send you my research on the best filtration systems.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says. She tilts her head at him. “That book came pre-marked.”

“Uh-huh. Well. The offer stands, regardless.”

He doesn’t say anything, just turns his attention back to his court prep. After a beat, the front door falls shut.

He pretends not to notice how much emptier the apartment feels all of a sudden.

###

He’s trying to sleep, but his brain won’t shut the fuck up.

It’s not the usual noisiness, either—the ‘don’t forget to bring home that file tomorrow’ or the ‘check the progress reports and follow up with the underperforming employees’ buzz that always keeps him from truly relaxing the way _some people_ manage to all the damn time.

With a groan, he pulls one of the pillows out from under his shoulders and lobs it across the room. It doesn’t make him feel any better.

Giving up, he snatches his phone up from his nightstand and googles _Rebecca Bunch Facebook_.

It takes a bit of sifting through randos, but he finds the profile which is, thankfully (unfortunately?), public.

And there he is, right there in her display picture. Not quite smiling, but not totally composed, either. And there’s Rebecca, flushed cheek pressed against his and wearing a bright smile he could easily trick himself into believing is real.

Scrolling just a little, he sees the post at the top of her feed is the outtake photo, captioned _Him: don’t you think we’ve taken enough pictures? Me:_

He smiles to himself and enlarges the photo.

His face is halfway out of frame and completely unfocused, but even still, it looks like he’s mid-laugh, mouth open wide in a full-toothed smile. Rebecca’s a blur of motion, her hair a brown streak and her eyes half-closed. He can still see how amused with herself she is, though. She’s obviously laughing into his cheek, teeth no longer pinching the skin of his jaw.

Absentmindedly, he rubs at the stubble where her mouth had been earlier, and, after a moment of consideration, opens a text message.

Nathaniel: _How’s the big announcement going over?_

He regrets it almost as soon as he presses send, and sets the phone down on his chest so he can’t see the screen. What a stupid conversation opener. He doesn’t even care what people might be saying about them dating. It’s not like any of it is real.

The new message alert pings just a few seconds later, startling him.

Rebecca: _No word from my mom yet._

He rolls his eyes, about to set the phone back on the nightstand. But she’s not done.

Rebecca: _I’m sure we’ll make a splash soon, though._

Nathaniel: _Oh, I’m not worried._

When she doesn’t say anything back for a moment, he goes to retrieve the pillow he’d thrown across the room. After crawling back into bed, he checks his phone just in case and finds another unread message. It feels like adrenaline pumps through him, the way his heart lurches and then speeds up upon seeing the notification. But there’s no physiological reason for that to be the case.

He clears his throat, takes a deep breath, and opens the text.

Rebecca: _You’re up late._

He considers the odd, almost electrical surge he feels from the crown of his head down to the heels of his feet before typing, _So are you._

Rebecca: _Side effect of being a lil crazy. What’s your excuse?_

He runs his tongue over his teeth, all at once unsure of what she’s looking for.

Nathaniel: _Oh, you know, brainstorming ways to protect my – what was it? – steely man-sona?_

Rebecca: _Right, right. You should probably get some sleep, though. Our boss can be a real slave driver. Needs everyone operating at 110% all the time._

With a breathy, relieved laugh, he types: _Goodnight, Rebecca._

Rebecca: _Sweet dreams, slave driver._

Grinning, he sets the phone aside and sits up to rearrange his pillows. Then he rolls over onto his side and goes right to sleep.

###

“Can I come in?”

Nathaniel casts a quick glance over to his door to find Paula standing there, arms crossed over her chest.

“You’re here early,” he comments.

“Well, yeah. Didn’t want to have this conversation during official work hours.”

A spasm of worry in his esophagus leaves him momentarily breathless, but he clears his throat and says calmly, “That probably means we shouldn’t have the conversation at all.”

“Probably not,” Paula says. “But it’s important.”

“Alright,” he says, sending off the email he’d just finished typing before nodding toward the chairs in front of his desk. “Have a seat.”

She does, arms still crossed and expression alarmingly somber. When she doesn’t say anything for a minute, he raises his eyebrows.

“I’m sorry,” she says, “I’m just trying not to say anything I’ll regret.”

It occurs to him that she’s angry right now, and something about that revelation makes him reach for one of the rubber bands on his desk—an outlet for his sudden nervous energy.

“Okay,” he says, wrapping the band around his index finger. “I appreciate that.”

“Oh, I don’t want your appreciation,” she says, somehow managing to lower her eyebrows in the middle and raise the ends at the same time. The result is more intimidating than he’d care to admit. “I’ve got my eye on you, Plimpton.”

He pulls the rubber so tight that it snags against his skin, stinging. “I’m confused.”

“Yeah, me too,” Paula says petulantly.

“Wait, what?”

“What are your intentions?” she asks.

Nathaniel holds out his hands, palms up, in a ‘what do you want from me?’ kind of gesture.

“With my Cookie!” she shouts, as if that clarifies anything.

“Your…cookie?” he asks, feeling an uneasy heat work its way up his neck and into his cheeks.

“Rebecca would not just start dating someone out of nowhere and not tell me about it. Not again.”

“Oh,” Nathaniel says, releasing his tight hold on the rubber band.

“What did you do to her?” Paula demands, beating back his short-lived relief. “Do you have something on her? Huh? Thought you’d finally get your revenge for the way she emasculated you last year?”

“Emasculated?” He scoffs. “That’s a bit of an overstatement, don’t you think?”

“I know you’re my boss, but I’ll unearth the skeletons in your closet so fast, buddy, you’ll wish you were one of ‘em.”

“Okay, let’s slow down, shall we? Maybe take it back to you not wanting to say something you’ll regret?” He gives her a pointed look, and she tilts her head in acknowledgement, acting as though the gesture costs her all her overtime pay. “I’m not forcing Rebecca into anything, alright?”

“Then how come I haven’t heard _anything_ about the two of you talking let alone getting close enough to date each other?”

“I, um,” he starts, not sure where the sentence is going to end. Improvisation has always been one of his weakest skills. He needs hours upon hours of diligent preparation to feel truly comfortable with a case before going into court for that very reason. Thankfully though, a reasonable explanation is well within his reach. “I asked her to keep quiet. You know, until we had gone through the proper channels. To avoid scandal.”

Paula looks for a second like she wants to argue, but then she just pouts out her lower lip. “I would have kept your secret.”

“That wasn’t in question,” he says, hoping he’s pacifying her. “It was just better this way.”

“Do you love her?”

The rubber band snaps when he tugs at it too aggressively, the ends cracking against his skin and making him wince. “Uh…”

“You know what a hard time she’s had in the past,” Paula persists. “You better not be just using her.”

“I don’t—um. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I, uh, love her,” Nathaniel says, forcing out the words. “It’s more of a ‘let’s see where this goes’ kind of situation.”

She looks him over, and he swallows hard, waiting with bated breath to see if he’s passed the test.

Finally, Paula stands to leave, and he lets out his breath in a gust. When she’s at the door, though, she turns back. “You hurt her, and I won’t hesitate to say things I regret.”

He blinks, feeling absurd for the tingle of fear that runs down his spine. “Understood.”

Apparently satisfied, she leaves his office with a flourish.

###

“Let’s catch up after work, okay? Right now I’ve gotta go to lunch with the BF. You know, no big deal, just a cozy, mid-day meal.”

Nathaniel rolls his eyes to the ceiling with a groan, but he can still pinpoint the exact second Rebecca sidles into the elevator next to him. His skin prickles, and flashes of the night they were stuck in this small space for hours and hours resurge without his permission.

“Hey there,” she says, getting close enough that if he shifted his weight to the left, their arms would brush. “Where’re we going?”

“ _I’m_ taking a client to lunch,” he says, and then glances down at her only to see her overly bright smile drop in time with the doors closing.

“What the hell, dude? You told Paula we’re not in love?”

He cocks his head at her. “So?”

“So: way to sell the relationship!” She pulls a face and starts using a mockingly deep voice. “‘A let’s-see-where-this-goes kind of situation.’ Are you for real?”

He schools his surprise off his face at the verbatim quote, but the thought of Paula and Rebecca discussing him in detail still brings a small frown to the corners of his mouth. “What’s wrong with that?”

“It sounds like you just want to get in my pants.”

“Great,” he says. “The better to sell the whole charade.”

“Oh, my god, don’t be a dick,” she says, and—because he was already thinking about that night, not because he’s worn compulsive grooves into the memories of what was said and what transpired—the triumph of making her laugh at the same words over a year ago washes over him.

He licks his lips to hide his smile, but he doesn’t think it works, exactly, because her narrow-eyed stare softens into something confused and hesitant. Like maybe she’s remembering, too.

Thankfully, the elevator reaches the ground floor at that moment.

“Look,” he hurries to say as she trails him outside. “If you want me to do better, give me some heads up about who is and isn’t in on the secret next time.”

“God, what are you, an idiot?”

He opens his mouth to retaliate, but she doesn’t give him the chance.

“Of course I didn’t tell her. First of all, she’s not good at playing it cool. But more importantly—” Rebecca shuffles along faster in an effort to match his stride and lowers her voice so only he can hear, “—if we can’t convince Paula this is real then we shouldn’t even bother with Naomi at all.”

He doesn’t know why her being so blasé about lying to her so-called best friend makes his stomach clench, but he quickly decides it’s best not to dwell. “All I’m saying is, it would be nice to remain informed. This isn’t going to work if we don’t communicate.”

“Fine,” Rebecca says, and he’s so caught off guard by how snotty she sounds that he comes to a halt right there on the well-manicured path to the industrial parkway’s garage. “You want communication? Why’d you agree to do this?”

Sweat immediately prickles at the back of his neck and he swallows so hard it leaves his throat feeling raw. “For the—” He cuts himself off. “You’re the one who asked me to get involved!”

“That’s what I thought,” she says, turning on her heel and walking away. Not back toward the building, just in the opposite direction as him. “Just do better next time, Plimpton!”

It takes a couple moments for the whiplash to wear off, but when it does, he feels too hot. Like his suit is several sizes too small.

He resumes his walk to his car, shaking his head a couple times like he can physically dislodge the confusion.

“Definitely failed the test,” he mutters to himself.

The more he thinks about it, though—brooding all through his drive to the restaurant—it’s actually like someone’s making him sit for an exam on a made-up subject. Passing, at this point, isn’t even an option.

###

The next morning is mercifully quiet. News of his fake relationship with Rebecca breaking or not, his employees know better than to disturb him on a Crestfield court day.

_Or not_ , Nathaniel thinks when he notices Darryl approaching his office. He steels himself for the interruption.

“Okay,” Darryl says as soon as the door is open. “I called and confirmed the time with the client—they’re expecting you in the lobby at 2. It’ll just be the financial advisor and the eldest Crestfield this time.”

“Oh.” Nathaniel crosses that off his mental list of things to do before leaving. “That’s—”

But Darryl’s not done. “And then I contacted the court. You’re scheduled on the fifth floor, room 506. They said to expect delays, so if you hit traffic, no biggie. Feeling good, champ? Ready to argue the pants off the opposing counsel?”

Nathaniel presses his lips together and narrows his eyes, silently asking Darryl to find some better wording.

“What’s that look? Is that a no?”

“It’s—” Nathaniel shakes his head. “Thanks, Darryl. I appreciate the foresight.”

It’s barely a compliment but, predictably, Darryl preens. “Oh, don’t mention it, it’s nothing.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Nathaniel says, turning his attention back to the case notes. “You’ve freed up some time for me, and that’s the mark of a good second-in-command.”

“Speaking of, since we’re having this little heart-to-heart—”

Nathaniel looks back up. “That’s not what—”

“—do you want some backup at the courthouse? I’ve already printed copies of all your notes just in case. Or, you know, if you need emotional support, I could be there to cheer you on.”

Nathaniel tries to keep his horror from showing on his face and mostly succeeds. “No, I don’t think I’ll need any of that.”

“Oh, okay,” Darryl says, trying to keep his devastation from showing and mostly failing. “It’s cool. It’s just, I went to school with one of the members of opposing counsel, so it would have been a fun little coinkydink to bump into him, but I guess I could do that some other time.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Unless, of course, you need—”

“Darryl,” Nathaniel says in the most level voice he can manage. “We’re good here.”

“Right,” Darryl says, backing toward the door.

Nathaniel gives him a final, tight-lipped smile to try to assuage the little knot of guilt he feels tighten in his chest. If only Darryl weren’t so effusive, Nathaniel wouldn’t be pushed to shortness in every damn conversation they have.

He rolls his shoulders, shaking off the last of the preoccupation, and gets back to work.

Just before lunch, he packs up his briefcase and heads out into the main office.

“You know the drill, everyone,” he says, voice booming through the space. “Just because I’m out of the office doesn’t mean you can slack off for a full afternoon. I want progress reports from everyone typed up and on my desk by the time I get back.”

A grumble of acknowledgement floats back to him. Nathaniel gives them all a tight nod, considering the matter closed, and heads for the elevator.

When he passes by Rebecca’s cubicle, she pops up to her feet.

“Hey, um.”

For an indulgent second, he considers ignoring her, but he knows how bad that’d look. So he pauses, turning on his heel to face her.

The last thing he expects to find is Rebecca on tip-toes, leaning up and into him. It takes an impressive amount of self-control not to jerk away in surprise.

She gives him a peck on the cheek, lips cool against his suddenly flushed skin, and then pulls away to smile almost bashfully up at him. “Break a leg.”

“Um, thanks,” he says, and he thinks he hears his voice crack. Fuck. “See you…later.”

And with that, he turns and makes a break for the stairs, taking them two at a time all the way to the ground floor.

###

He’d been sloppy.

The judge had ruled in his favor, but that hardly matters in light of how distracted he’d been. He’d glossed over a few points he’d wanted to make in his opening argument, and he’d let the client hear him fumble some of basic tax codes like an absolute moron.

With a grunt, Nathaniel throws back the rest of the scotch in his glass and pours himself some more.

She’s in his head—she had been the whole time court had been in session and she is now, still. He keeps lingering on how hesitant her smile had been, the way it had seemed out of sync with the firm, sure press of her lips.

All at once he’s trying to banish the memory and catalogue every detail, every bit of sensory input he’d managed to gather. The better to immerse himself in later, when he needs some fresh torturous memories and their night in the elevator or the evening he’d flown in her father feels too stale to revisit.

Nathaniel brings his palm down onto the table, frustrated and buzzing with unfocused energy.

Of course that’s when his father chooses to call. Of course it is.

“Pops,” Nathaniel answers, trying to sound level-headed and in control.

“The Crestfield account. What’s the update?”

“Uh, good. Everything’s good.”

“You hesitated. Why’d you hesitate?”

“No, it’s nothing. We won, and the client walked away happy.”

His father hums, acknowledging this but clearly not buying it. “Fine then. That’s not the only reason I called.”

“It’s not?” Nathaniel asks, his voice spiked with worry.

“I know you’re seeing that girl. That unstable and insolent liberal.”

_Oh. Oh no._

“Dad—”

“You thought what? Filing official paperwork with the company wouldn’t somehow make its way back to me?”

“No, I—”

“Too cowardly to tell me yourself, then.”

“I don’t understand,” Nathaniel says, letting his agitation leak into his voice. “Are you seriously upset with me for going through the proper channels before making any kind of public announcement?”

“I thought I’d made myself clear in the past,” his father says, ignoring him, “but since you apparently didn’t get the message, let me be frank. I don’t like what that girl does to you.”

_Join the club_ , Nathaniel thinks wryly, and takes a swig of his drink. The usual smoothness of the scotch burns like acid: more of a punishment than an escape. Out loud, he says, “You don’t really get a say in the matter, now do you?”

It works—deigning to fight back always drives his father to cold indifference. “Don’t get smart with me, Nathaniel.”

“I would never,” he says under his breath.

Thankfully, his father isn’t really listening to him. No surprise there. “I’m only trying to protect the firm. The last thing we need is another lawsuit from that—”

“Then it’s a good thing the papers are in order,” Nathaniel says loudly. Too loudly. He flushes over his own wildness and swallows hard, too distracted by what a spectacle he’s making himself into to really comprehend what his father was about to say. More level, he says, “I remembered to put the firm first, Pops, don’t worry.”

“Yes, well. We’ll see.” His father hangs up then.

Nathaniel clenches his fist around his phone and then, after steeling himself, dials Rebecca’s number.

“Hey, there, BF. To what do I owe this late-night pleasure?”

“Rebecca,” he says warningly, disgusted with the way her cheerful voice has an immediate effect on him.

“You know, I’m glad you called. I wanted to tell you that you played the whole smitten, flustered act perfectly. Paula totally bought it, and now she thinks we’re kinda cute. I mean, I suspect she also sees how this could be played to her benefit—having her best friend dating her boss—but who could really blame her? Either way, we totally did it. And it was easy, too, right?”

He can’t even feel grateful that she thinks his reaction had been contrived, not with his anger hanging like thick fog in his head and obscuring all rational thought. So, he snaps. “Rebecca!”

She gets quiet in a way that’s rare for her, and he knows he has her undivided attention.

“If you ever behave that unprofessionally again, I will write you up. Do you understand?”

“Oh, dude, come on—”

“I am still your boss,” he says, managing to keep most of the petulance from his voice. “You will treat me as such. Otherwise, we’re going to have a problem. Do you understand?”

“Yeah,” she says meekly. “Yeah, okay.”

“Okay. Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”

As soon as he hangs up, he pours himself another drink.

###

“Whoa there, someone’s looking a little worse for wear.”

Nathaniel considers it a personal victory that he barely stutters while stirring his coffee when he hears Rebecca’s voice right behind him.

“What’d you do? Play a game of water polo in a vat of whiskey?”

“Rebecca,” he says, acknowledging her with a slight incline of his head. “You’re peppy this morning.”

“Sure am! And what’s got you so grumpy? Can’t be the Crestfield account. I have it on good authority that you won that case.”

He tosses his wooden stirrer into the trash and finally turns to look at her, raising his eyebrows questioningly. Not even her annoying, incessant yapping at his heels can stop him from noticing her unbothered smile and all-too-casual playfulness.

God, it’s like nothing he says has any effect on her. He remembers with painful clarity every silly barb she’s ever thrown at him—ready, aim, and _bullseye_ —and yet his necessary reprimands roll right off her back.

“I follow all the local judges on Twitter,” she says off his dubious expression. “It’s actually kind of hilarious. Some of them use their accounts like they’re just another, boring court record, but others have this blood feud thing going. They’re really catty with each other. It’s like watching a poorly paced soap opera.”

“Fascinating,” he says, rubbing his forehead hard enough to turn it red in hopes the sensation will distract a little from his pounding headache.

“So if it’s not work, what is it?”

He lets his arm fall limp at his side. For a second, he considers how it would feel to tell her that his dad had called him last night before he called her. _Pitiful_ , he decides.

So instead, he settles for a different form of the truth. “I, uh, I was mean to you last night.”

“Yeah, what else is new?”

He resents that her comment makes him want to smile. He settles for shaking his head. “I regret the way I spoke to you.”

“Ah, well, that is new.”

That does it. The grin unfurls without his permission.

She smiles back and takes a step closer to him until she’s standing a less-than-professional distance away.

“You were right though. This _thing_ ,” she gestures between the two of them, “would probably benefit from me not ambushing you every opportunity I get.”

He nods, surprised. “I’d appreciate that.”

“Good. So, we can just count yesterday as a fluke.”

“Absolutely,” he says, wishing he could mean it. Could really just pretend the events of the previous day didn’t happen.

“Great,” Rebecca says, sidestepping him to get to the coffee pot.

He nods some more, and then starts to head for his office. He feels someone pinch his ass, though, and jolts.

“What did we just talk about?” he hisses, spinning back to face her. His eyes quickly dart around to see if anyone else had been watching—thankful that no one’s started the mad morning dash to the coffee pot just yet—before they settle on Rebecca.

“Hey.” She holds up her hands, pretending to be innocent and looking anything but. “I said not _every_ opportunity. That means some are still fair game.”

The urge to snap at her all over again is strong, but his resolve to remain in control hardens as he stares into her shining, animated eyes.

If she can treat this like it’s all fun and games—like nothing they say or do to each other matters—than so should he.

“Beware, Bunch. I’m gonna retaliate when you least expect it.”

“Oh yeah?” she asks, eyebrows waggling. “I’d like to see you try.”

He puckers his lips and backs toward his office. “You’re on.”

###

Rebecca pushes into his office around 1:30 in the afternoon, grease-splotched bag of fast food in one hand and a carrying case for beverages in the other.

“I come bearing a peace offering.”

“We already worked things out,” Nathaniel reminds her. “Besides, I’d sooner die than eat anything from a place called In-N-Out Burger.”

“Yeah, I know,” she says, setting a smoothie down on his desk and then falling into one of the chairs. “This is all for me.”

He watches narrow-eyed as she unpacks a sandwich and two sleeves of fries from her bag. “You’re going to eat that in here?”

“Is there a problem?” she asks, ripping a fry in half more aggressively than necessary.

“It’s going to smell.”

“You’re welcome for that.”

He curls his lip at her in response, and then pokes the smoothie with a pen. “Where’d you get this?”

“Not from In-N-Out Burger.”

That’s certainly comforting to hear, but he doesn’t let himself be pacified quite yet. “What’s in it?”

“Oh, my god, dude.” Rebecca reaches over the desk to pick the cup up and set it even closer to him. “You haven’t left your desk all day, you look like your brain is slowly leaking out of your ears, and it has spinach in it. Just freaking drink it.”

He feels his ears twinge with the beginning of a smile, though he’d be hard-pressed to explain why her yelling at him over a smoothie has that effect on him.

“Fine,” he says, aiming for snippy but landing somewhere in the vicinity of placated. He takes a tentative sip.

“Good,” she says back, a small smile on her face.

They fall into a surprisingly companionable silence. After a few moments of Rebecca waggling every fry at Nathaniel before she puts it in her mouth like she can tantalize him into eating one, she gives up and pulls out a thick paperback seemingly from nowhere. He raises his eyebrows at the shirtless, brawny man clutching a waifish woman to his chest on the cover.

“Research,” Rebecca explains.

He rolls his eyes, choosing not to touch that one, and turns his attention to the list he’s compiling for his mother—important contacts from the West Covina branch that’ll need an invite to the Plimpton’s big end-of-the-year soiree—nursing his smoothie all the while.

Once he’s finished, he sends it off to her in an email before sneaking a glance at Rebecca.

If the weight of his gaze has any effect at all on her concentration, she doesn’t let it show. Her stare remains focused on the page as her fingers tap the edge of his desk lightly, like they’re unsure if they’re gonna grab another fry just yet.

He blinks, and the creeping contentment of the moment catches him off guard. He nearly gives himself over to it before he remembers that she’s just in here spending time with him for appearance’s sake.

_And you’re spending time with her as a means to an end_ , he reminds himself. _Nothing more._

He nearly sighs with relief when he notices Darryl’s boyfriend approaching the door, then. Nathaniel waves him in before he can knock.

“Hey, man.” Josh nods at him in greeting before noticing Rebecca. “Oh. You’re here.”

“Hello to you too,” she says, not looking up from the book. She grabs her paper soda cup and raises it to him in a toast.

“One order of peeled and fried heart attack wasn’t enough for you? You really needed two?” Josh asks, indicating the cartons of fries.

Finally setting the paperback aside, Rebecca locks eyes with Josh, grabs a fry, and takes a bite. “Mmm, tastes like the womb. So warm, so nurturing.”

“That’s disgusting,” Nathaniel says, physically recoiling.

She turns on him immediately, tossing one of her fries on top of a stack of papers.

“Real mature,” he says, tossing it back at her. She picks it up from where it lands on her chest and pops it in her mouth.

“Man, heterosexual flirting is weird.”

They both let out an uncomfortable laugh at Josh’s comment, their eyes meeting for a second before they glance away. Before Nathaniel can ruminate on why pink rises in Rebecca’s cheeks—why would _she_ be flustered right now?—Josh continues.

“Anyway, I’m here to see if you’re free tomorrow.”

“For?”

“I’m planning a night on the town for Darryl. A ‘remember all the reasons it’s cool to have a semi-autonomous kid instead of a helpless baby’ kind of deal.”

“Ooh la la,” Rebecca says. “A night on the town, you say?”

Josh rolls his eyes up to the ceiling. “You can’t come.”

Before Nathaniel can ask why, Rebecca lets out a humorous chuckle. “Why? Because Chan’s gonna be there? We called a truce, remember?”

“Doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to throw gasoline and a lit match in the same room together.”

“Har, har.”

“Rebecca and I are together,” Nathaniel hears himself say. “If you’re inviting me, I’d bring her anyway.”

Josh frowns, and starts to say something, but Nathaniel cuts him off.

“Besides, Darryl adores Rebecca. I’m sure he’d be over the moon to have her attend his night on the town.”

After a second of pouting, Josh simply shakes his head. “Straights.”

“Health nuts,” Rebecca says back at him, equally scathing.

“Fine, whatever. You guys can both come. We’re going,” Josh pauses and sighs, “bowling at seven-thirty and then hitting Spiders’ after a few games.”

“And what a night on the town it’ll be,” Rebecca says in a way that should be mocking the event, but she sounds excited. Nathaniel shakes his head, turning his attention back to work.

Seconds later, he hears the door to his office clang shut.

“We’re going to a par-tay.”

Nathaniel looks back up to find Rebecca dancing in her seat. “Hmm, yeah, have fun with that.”

“What? You’re not coming?”

“Why would I?”

“Well, you did just flex your chivalry to get me invited—nice touch, by the way.”

He drops his eyes. “It wouldn’t be very prudent of me to show up, now would it?”

“Prudent?”

“Socializing with my employees—particularly going to a club with my employees—wouldn’t give the best impression.”

“Darryl’s hardly employed by you,” she says, scoffing at him.

“And you think no one else from the office got an invite?”

“Okay, fine, they probably did. But all the better, honestly.”

Nathaniel lets out a noisy breath through his nose. “Do I even wanna ask why?”

“Come on! Big social event, lots of people. It’s the perfect opportunity to not only show off our new coupledom in our circle of friends and acquaintances, but to end up casually in the background of a bunch of photos that’ll be posted on social media.”

“You’re not going to leave this alone until I agree, are you?”

She grins at him. “What do you think?”

He _thinks_ he could bet all of his assets that he’ll be getting chewed out by his father again this weekend and not lose a single penny.

Yet he still holds his hands up in surrender, making her squeal with delight.

“But I will not be caught dead bowling,” he says.

“No bowling—copy that.”

He does not find her excitement contagious in the least.

###

“That’s what you’re wearing?” Heather asks, squinting at him when she answers the front door to her and Rebecca’s home.

Nathaniel smooths his hand over his gray dress shirt. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”

“It’s so…business casual. You know we’re going to a club, right?”

“And I was supposed to paint on a shirt with body glitter?” He snaps his fingers, a gesture of mock regret. “Ran out last week. Haven’t had time to pick up more.”

Heather raises one eyebrow, looking like someone who practices her scathing-indifference faces in the mirror until they’re perfect. “All I’m saying is you could at least pretend for a night that you’re not a corporate stick in the mud.”

“No,” he says, “I really can’t.”

“Well then I guess I respect your commitment to your true self, Stick.”

Nathaniel takes a deep breath in through his nose. “Are you going to invite me in?”

She jerks her chin up at him. “What would you do if I said no? Snap?”

He closes his eyes.

“Alright, alright, I’m kidding,” she says, stepping back from the doorway. “You’re awfully brittle, Stick.”

“Are you going to call me that all night?” he asks, taking a tentative step inside. The last time he’d been here was Rebecca’s reception, and he cringes at the memory.

Without all the people bustling around, the interior looks much cozier. He finds himself charmed despite the smell of marijuana hanging thick in the air.

“Maybe longer,” Heather says, flopping down on the couch and retrieving a still-lit joint from the ashtray on the coffee table. She’s already giggling at her own joke when she continues, “We’ll see if it…sticks.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Nathaniel says, leaning up against the wall. “You’re hilarious.”

She hums before taking a drag and then holding it out to him. “Want some?”

“Designated driver,” he says, pointing to his own chest. After a beat, he adds, “But thank you.”

Heather salutes him.

“I thought I asked you to open a window before smoking that in the common room,” Rebecca says, and Nathaniel does a double-take at her appearance.

“And as a frequent violator of our roomie rules, what’re you gonna do about it?” Heather asks.

“Un-invite you from the night’s activities,” Rebecca says, and so long as she’s caught up in her squabble with Heather, Nathaniel lets his eyes roam down from the sparkly blue top that’s not low-cut by any means but still manages to be extremely flattering to her practically painted-on jeans. His throat is thick when he swallows.

“Oh no,” Heather says flatly. “Please don’t make me miss an outing with the guy who left you at the altar and the one you’re trying to trick all your closest friends into believing you’re dating. Anything but that.”

“Can we cool it with the casual discussion of the fakeness of my relationship?”

Heather shrugs.

Rebecca rolls her eyes, and then seems to notice that Nathaniel’s there for the first time. She looks him up and down and says, “ _That’s_ what you’re wearing?”

“Told you, dude,” Heather says, shooting him a smug grin.

“Got anything I can borrow?” he asks her in a falsetto.

“Your patronization is offensive on, like, so many different levels,” Heather says at the same time Rebecca smacks him lightly in the stomach.

“Ow.”

“You wish you could pull off Heather’s wardrobe,” Rebecca says, cocking a challenging eyebrow at him.

“ _You_ wish he’d pull off _your_ wardrobe,” Heather says, pushing up off the couch.

Nathaniel feels his cheeks warm, and Rebecca looks for a moment like she’s considering putting the joint out in Heather’s eye.

“Alright, I’m nice and buzzed. Let’s get a move on people. V’s expecting us in ten.”

“V?” Nathaniel asks.

“Valencia,” Heather says matter-of-factly.

He turns to Rebecca for elucidation. She looks pained for a second before offering up, “My would-be wedding planner?”

“Ah. So did you invite everyone you’ve ever met?” he asks, vaguely recalling the woman in question stopping by the office a few different times.

“We’re friends,” Rebecca explains, grabbing onto his arm for balance as she pulls on some shoes.

“So are we picking up Paula, too?” he asks.

“Date night,” Heather explains succinctly.

He nods as Rebecca lets go of him. The shoes have thick heels and when she straightens, he notices that her chin is nearly level with his shoulder.

He wonders idly if she has any specific plans for their mitigated height difference and then quickly dismisses the thought.

“Look at that,” Heather says, reaching out to pat the top of Rebecca’s head. “You’re no longer a midget.”

Rebecca gives her a tight grin before turning serious. “Got your game faces on?”

Heather holds up her hand like she’s about to take an oath. “I promise to make no direct mention of the fact that you’re weirdly asking this weird man to weirdly pretend to date you.”

Rebecca takes a deep breath in through her nose, and then nods. “Thank you, Heather.” Then she turns to him, and he realizes how much easier it is to look her in the eye like this. He doesn’t even have to crane his neck, not really. “Are you ready?”

His mouth feels dry, but he manages a meek smile. “Sure. Let’s go.”

###

“I forgot about how _boring_ going to a club is until you actually get into the club,” Rebecca says, leaning into Nathaniel with a groan.

He panics, wondering what the appropriate response is—putting his arm around her shoulders? Or maybe her waist? Or is he supposed to kiss the top of her head?—before too much time passes and he decides it’d draw attention to his own awkwardness if he acts now.

“If it was just us girls,” Valencia says, giving Nathaniel and then Josh, Hector, and the Flip-flop dirty looks, “we’d already be inside.”

“We get it, Valencia,” Josh says, shooting her daggers right back. “You think you’re hot and we’re not.”

“Well I didn’t want to say it, but…” She gives an ‘it is what it is’ shrug.

“Who invited you again?”

“Come on, dude,” Flip-flop says. “Be nice.”

“Yeah,” Darryl agrees. “Let’s get in the party spirit. No one can be mean when they’re in the party spirit! Who wants to sing the Pi song?”

“Do you think Darryl would relax or get super jumpy paranoid if we offered him some weed?” Heather asks no one in particular under her breath.

“I’d bet on the latter,” Nathaniel says to her.

“Yeah,” Heather says regretfully, like the idea of it truly upsets her.

Rebecca lets out a soft laugh, and it’s only because she’s pressed up against him that he hears. Without thinking, he smiles down at her. A grin spreads over her features in response.

“So,” the Flip-flop says as they all shuffle half-a-step forward in line. “How long have you two been seeing each other?”

“Oh, please,” Valencia says, immediately jumping in. “Like you have any right to ask her that.”

“Sorry, dude,” Rebecca says with an amiable shrug. “My bodyguard slash love advisor has spoken.”

The Flip-flop laughs at her joke, and Rebecca gives him a warm smile that has Nathaniel shifting into her and, as casually as possible, draping his arm around her waist.

“Smooth,” Heather says, drawling the o sound for several beats.

It’s a testament to how distracted Rebecca is that she doesn’t even notice the jab. Nathaniel frowns to himself and tugs her just a little closer.

“Don’t know how smart it is to take love advice from Valencia,” Hector says and then reaches out to ruffle the Flip-flop’s hair, who ducks. “She did date this guy for, like, half her life.”

“Keep talking and you won’t live to see another to see another minute of yours,” Valencia says cheerily.

“That’s a no on the Pi song, then?” Darryl asks.

“Three-point-one-four-one-five-nine,” Rebecca starts to sing, bouncing along with the music that’s leaking out from inside.

“Can we not?” Heather asks.

“So you’re saying you don’t want to play with the multiplication flash cards I have in my bag?” Rebecca shoots back.

“I mean, only if you also have gold stars to give me every time I get a problem right.”

Josh tips his head up toward the sky. “So glad I organized this outing. I’m having so much fun.”

“Well I’m having fun,” Darryl says, stealing a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you.”

Nathaniel sees them share a private smile, and he’s not sure why that makes the muscles in his own face feel tight and immobile.

###

As soon as they get inside, Valencia grabs hold of Heather and Rebecca and drags them out to the dancefloor.

The Flip-flop and his cronies take one look around before heading for the bar, so Nathaniel trails after Darryl to help him claim some unoccupied tables.

They end up pushing a couple together in an informal group before sitting down.

“I’m happy you made it out tonight,” Darryl says to him, shouting to be heard over the music.

Nathaniel nods, but doesn’t pull his eyes away from the edge of the floor where Rebecca, Heather, and Valencia are standing in a circle doing some kind of silly hip-bump thing.

“You’re always working so hard,” Darryl continues. “You deserve to let loose and have some fun.

“Yeah,” Nathaniel says. “I guess.”

“It’s nothing to be worried about,” Darryl says. “Her and Josh.”

It takes Nathaniel a prolonged moment to realize he’s talking about Josh Chan and not his boyfriend, but when he does, he turns his head to look Darryl in the eye.

“I’m not worried,” he says, a little too sharply.

Darryl pats him on the back a couple times.

After just a second of weighing the risks of asking Darryl a personal question, he leans into the table and says, “Do you know what happened between them? After the wedding?”

Darryl’s eyebrows furrow. “Aren’t you dating her?”

“We’re not really at the talk-about-exes stage yet,” Nathaniel says, leaving out the part where they’ll never be at that stage because it’s all a scam.

After taking a moment to mull it over, Darryl says, “You’ll never get to that stage if you don’t ask. So you should really talk to her if you want the story.”

Nathaniel frowns and glances back over at where the girls are dancing. “Right.”

“It is nice, though, I think.”

“What?”

“That they’re trying to be friends. I think it’s just great when love can evolve and you get to keep the people you really care about close to you.”

Nathaniel _hmm_ s, mulling that over. “I don’t think I have that much faith in evolution.”

“Oh, come on, you can’t fool me,” Darryl says, and when Nathaniel snaps his head around to look at him, he offers up a sly smile. “You’re not one to believe in creationism.”

Nathaniel lets out a huff of a laugh just as the other guys approach the table. Flip-flop and Hector climb up into the seats and Josh places a dark beer in front of Darryl.

After Darryl takes a sip, Josh grabs his hand and tugs. “Dance time?”

“Oh yeah,” Darryl says. “I’m ready to rumba!”

Watching Darryl and Josh shimmy their way to the dancefloor pushes Nathaniel’s attention back to Rebecca. She catches him staring and waves before shouting something in Valencia’s ear.

Valencia starts to follow Rebecca to the table, but Nathaniel notices Heather catch her wrist and spin her in close. Valencia’s responding smile catches him off guard. Not that he’s spent much time with her, but even he can tell that kind of warmth from Valencia is unusual.

“Hey, you,” Rebecca says, bouncing up to him, breathless and flushed. “I’m coming up.”

He gulps, but scoots back from the table obediently so she can hop up into his lap. It’s clumsy—at one point she plants her hand directly on his crotch, making him jolt—but she eventually manages it.

He has to hold his arm pretty tightly around her center to keep her from slipping back down, and he can feel each heavy breath she takes. He can also feel the way her shirt is clinging to her lower back with sweat. It should be unpleasant—and, to a certain extent, it definitely is—but he also finds himself drawing pleasure from how radiantly warm she is.

“Need water,” she says to the table at large.

“I gotcha, Becks,” the Flip-flop says, producing a water bottle and sliding it over the tabletops. “And I also got a couple extras for the group.”

“A true hero,” Rebecca says in such a way that Nathaniel can’t tell if it’s a genuine sentiment or sarcasm. Then she uncaps the water and tips her head back to guzzle it down.

With the column of her neck stretched long right there in front of him and the sting of her comment hanging in his head, Nathaniel’s hit with a heady impulse. Of course, he _is_ supposed to be helping her sell this, so it’d only be pragmatic to chase the image in his head, really.

Convinced he’s doing it for the right reasons, he lets his fingers trail from behind her ear and down her neck, soaking the heat of her skin up into the pads of his fingers and combing her hair back and back and back until he can sweep it all over her other shoulder in one smooth motion. Then he leans in and presses his face into the crook of her neck.

She stops drinking and makes a low, contented noise in the back of her throat that he doesn’t think he’s supposed to hear. His mouth spreads into a smile, and he can feel his stubble pull lightly against her skin.

“That tickles.”

“It’s the facial hair,” he says, letting his chin scrape lightly against her.

She shivers, and it makes him want to talk until his voice fades into nothing.

“Smile,” Hector says. “You’re on Candid Camera.”

By the time Nathaniel pulls away to give the man a funny look, the picture’s already been taken.

“What?” he asks. “My mom and I have been working through her old VHS tapes. Throwbacks are in.”

“And on that note,” Rebecca says, sliding down off Nathaniel’s legs. He lets her go reluctantly. “Care to join me for a dance?”

He raises a skeptical eyebrow at her, and she grins knowingly.

“Yeah, yeah.” She pops up onto her tip-toes. To the others, it’ll look like she’s giving him a kiss on the cheek, but she’s actually leaning in to whisper in his ear, “Enjoy these two.”

He makes a face at her as she bounds away as quickly as she’d come, inserting herself between the cozy-looking Heather and Valencia.

“So,” Flip-flop says, “You’re, like, Rebecca’s boss, right?”

Nathaniel stares at him, but doesn’t respond.

He tries again. “Do you want anything to drink?”

“I’m driving,” Nathaniel says curly.

“Oh, okay.”

“Would you look at that,” Hector says all of a sudden, already getting out of his seat and trying to push the Flip-flop out of his. “I think Whijo’s waving us over. We should go see what that’s about.”

“You okay here by yourself?” the Flip-flop pauses to ask, even after he’s out of his seat.

But Nathaniel refuses to be charmed as easily as everyone else. He simply nods his head once in response.

###

A little while later, everyone comes back to the table for a cool down.

To Nathaniel’s disappointment, Rebecca doesn’t choose to sit on his lap again, but she does sling her legs over his thighs once she’s collapsed in her own seat.

“Alright everyone,” the Flip-flop clinks his phone against his beer bottle with great ceremony. “I’d like to propose a toast: to Darryl!”

Josh nudges his boyfriend with his shoulder a couple times, making Darryl laugh.

“You really are an awesome marshmallow for holding this rice-krispie-treat of an outing together.”

In response to the funny looks on most people’s faces, Darryl clarifies, “It’s like a thing I said once.”

“At my bachelor party,” Flip-flop adds, casting a look across the table at Rebecca. She nods at him and then ducks her head. He amends, “My would-be bachelor party.”

She looks up at him again, catching his eye, and they smile at each other. For the second time that night, the muscles in Nathaniel’s face stiffen, and his chest feels strangely heavy.

“To Darryl,” Nathaniel says a bit too forcefully, raising the water bottle Rebecca had been drinking from earlier.

“To Darryl,” everyone echoes.

“Hey,” Nathaniel says, tapping Rebecca’s legs to get her to move them. She sits up. “Do you want to go dance?”

Her eyebrows shoot up her forehead. “You want to dance?”

He feels Heather’s eyes the second they land on him, but he forces himself not to look over at her. “Make a big deal about it, and the offer’s off the table.”

“What if I make a medium deal out of it?”

“Do you want to dance or not?”

She grins and gets up out of her chair. He follows suit.

He’s done stuff like this before, of course—gone out to clubs, danced with girls—but the second they actually make it to the dancefloor, Nathaniel forgets how to move every one of his limbs.

Rebecca yells something to him, but they’re much closer to the DJ booth now. He shakes his head at her.

She gets closer, hands catching his hips at the exact moment he’s about to take a stumbling step backward, and repeats herself. “Relax!”

He’s struck anew by how the shoes she’s wearing bring her face so much closer to his. His eyes fall to her lips for a second before he quickly forces them back up. She raises her eyebrows at him in response, but all he can do is swallow thickly.

“Maybe I should just sit back down,” he yells.

She pouts out her lower lip and widens her eyes at him, and he dips his head, his nose nearly brushing her forehead.

With a defeated sigh, he moves his hands to her hips.

Clearly delighted, she does a little bounce, and he peeks back up at her from under his lashes. When their eyes meet, she holds his gaze for a second before letting hers fall.

He’d be disappointed if a second later she doesn’t bend at the knees and let her hips go loose, swaying from side to side. Since he’s holding onto her, he kind of has no choice but to submit to the motion himself.

It should be awkward, standing there among the other sweaty people and unable to hear anything but the pounding beat of the music. _She_ should be awkward, this being the performance of her life what with all her friends watching them.

But he’s witnessed firsthand on a number of occasions how easily her self-consciousness can fall away to reveal a cocky swagger. He’s not surprised, then, when her next move is to reach up and run a hand through his hair at the back of his head, but it still leaves him with tingling skin from the top of his scalp down to where his fingertips are pressing into her hips.

Gulping and all too aware of their audience, he leans down to press his forehead into hers in response. She grabs a fistful of hair where he lets it grow a little longer on top, and he feels the bass rumble through him, threatening to shake the strange, weighty emotion in his chest free.

“Sweet moves,” she shouts at him.

“Back at you,” he says, and she laughs.

He almost finds it in his heart to feel thankful for Josh Chan.

###

Valencia and Rebecca fall asleep in the backseat of his car on the drive back to Rebecca’s place, and Heather keeps cranking around in her seat to look at them and smile.

Inspired, Nathaniel glances up at the rearview mirror. All he catches is a glimpse of Rebecca’s slack-jawed sleep face, her head resting on top of Valencia’s, who’s slumped into her side, but it’s enough to make him smile, too.

“That was some night, don’tcha think, Stick?” Heather says through a yawn.

“I refuse to answer to that,” he says.

“I mean, and you played the whole jealous boyfriend shtick perfectly,” she continues, as if he hadn’t even spoken.

“Wh-I—”

“You weren’t jealous, huh?”

“I wasn’t.”

“Dude, I know we just met each other and everything, but you should know that imparting wisdom you didn’t know you needed is kind of my thing.”

“Good for you.”

“And I can tell pretending nothing fazes you is your thing.”

“So?”

“So it’s like an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. If I didn’t drop out of my physics class, I’d tell you what happens next. But I guess we’ll just have to wait and find out.”

“It’s an impossible scenario,” Nathaniel says, “so nothing happens.”

Heather hums. “We’ll see.”

He shakes his head at her ridiculousness, but they fall back into companionable enough silence.

Eventually, when he catches her looking back at Valencia again, he says, “Why not just ask her out if you’re so obnoxiously blunt?”

Heather blinks at him in surprise.

“What? You think you’re the only person who pays attention to what’s going on around you?”

He catches her sleepy smile for just a second before returning his eyes to the road.

“Kinda, yeah. I mean, you’ve met Rebecca, right?”

“She can be obtuse,” he agrees.

“It’s for the good of the group,” Heather says after a short pause. “The not asking her out.”

“The group?”

“We have this girl group,” she says, “and it’s kind of a big deal to us. So if one us were to ask out another member and the other member only liked that person back as a friend, then things would be weird.” Heather turns to stare into the backseat as she says, “It’s not worth making it weird.”

“But what if it is?” he asks, his face scrunching with concentration. “What if it’s worth making things weird?”

This time, he finds an unexpected bit of relief in the shrewdness of Heather’s stare. Like if she looks long and hard enough at him, she can solve all his problems.

“That’s always the gamble with being vulnerable, right? You either make it weird, or you get the payoff.”

“Only suckers gamble,” he says, unable to keep the pout entirely from his voice. It’s just—it’s one of his dad’s few mantras that he actually wholeheartedly agrees with.

“Guess we’re a planet full of suckers,” Heather says, and then yawns again.

Nathaniel says nothing.

When they pull up in front of the house and he cuts the engine, they continue sitting there for a few moments.

“You want me to pretend like this conversation never happened, Stick?” she asks.

He rolls his eyes, but turns his head to smile at her. “No, actually, I don’t think that I do.”

“Look at that,” she says, punching him in the arm. “You’re becoming a smarter gambler already.”

“Oxymoron.”

Heather shrugs. “That’s what you think,” she says, and when he doesn’t respond she adds, “Help me get them inside?”

He’s able to scoop Rebecca up into his arms without jostling her awake, but Heather ends up having to rouse Valencia, who groans and sleepily requests a painkiller.

“She’s right through there,” Heather says, pointing out Rebecca’s room once they’ve successfully unlocked the door and made it into the kitchen.

He listens to the soft rumbling of Heather’s voice and the sound of the faucet before Rebecca stirs in his arms and claims his attention.

“Where are we?” she asks blearily.

“Your house,” he says, setting her as gracefully as he can into her bed.

“Mm, we were on fire tonight,” she says.

“Sure,” he replies, trying to pry her fingers off the front of his shirt.

“Nathaniel?” Rebecca asks, and something about his name falling softly from her lips makes his heart squeeze painfully.

“Yes?”

“Can you remove my shoes?”

He laughs. “Yeah.”

“And my jeans?”

“Rebecca.”

“Bad for circulation. I could lose a foot while I sleep.”

He hangs his head to hide his smile from her, and then moves to the foot of the bed to slip her shoes off her feet. Magical, midget-disappearing shoes.

“I’ll send someone in to help, okay?”

But she’s already rolled over and gone back to sleep, so she doesn’t hear him. He’s officially dismissed from the night’s duties.

Still, something keeps him rooted in place, watching as her breathing gets deep and even. All at once overwhelmed with an emotion he doesn’t care to identify, he leans over her and uses the pads of his fingers to comb the hair back from her face and over her shoulder once more. She sighs.

With the feeling heavy in his chest, he lets himself out.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, as usual, to Bethany! You feedback on this chapter made me extra excited to share it.

“So, that was your boyfriend, was it?”

Rebecca glances over to where Valencia’s sitting at the kitchen table, back ramrod straight and looking far too put together for this early in the morning—almost like she’s rubbing it in her face that Rebecca feels like she spent the night out in the middle of the unforgiving desert, all crusty mouth and oversensitive skin.

She shoves the carafe back in the coffee maker with an inward sigh.

Heather and Valencia’s loud laughter and constant chatter had roused her out of bed much earlier than she’d planned on getting up. She’s not exactly feeling sharp enough for a round of fake-relationship vetting.

“That was him,” she says, dragging the seat opposite Valencia out from under the table and plopping into it.

“That’s it?” Valencia asks, perfect eyebrow arching.

“What’s it?”

“You’re not going to launch into a monologue about how you two met or give me every insufferable detail of your first date?”

Rebecca swings her eyes over to Heather, who’s grinning into her own mug of coffee. “What? You and your disturbing tendency to overshare are on your own.”

“It’s not disturbing,” Rebecca says.

Heather gives a little cough, making it clear that she thinks otherwise, but she seems to be enjoying herself all the same.

With a scowl, Rebecca takes a big gulp of her too-hot coffee—she needs to stimulate cognitive function and quick—cringing as it burns her mouth. “Fuck, ow” She pauses, blowing on her coffee to give herself a moment. “What do you want to know?”

Valencia drums her nails on the table. “I guess I’m curious as to why this is the first we’ve heard of him.”

“Heather actually met him last week,” Rebecca says.

Valencia narrows her eyes until they’re tiny little slits—Rebecca wonders if she can even see out of them—at the same time Heather’s bug out of their sockets.

“Um, that’s technically true,” Heather says.

“Roommate privilege,” Rebecca says, anticipating Valencia’s next question.

“Well, I wouldn’t call it a privilege,” Heather says.

“That still doesn’t explain the secrecy,” Valencia says.

“What, am I under interrogation here?” When Valencia crosses her arms over her chest, Rebecca sighs. “It was a work thing, okay?”

“Your first _date_?” Valencia asks, sounding disgusted. Heather snorts.

“The reason I haven’t talked about him—” Rebecca hears the defensiveness in her own voice, and takes a long breath in through her nose before continuing. “He owns the majority of the branch. We had to file a bunch of paperwork before I could really tell anybody.”

Valencia’s nostrils flare like she can actually smell a lie. “As if that’d stop you.”

“She has a point,” Heather says, and Rebecca flings out her leg, kicking her in the shin.

“Right, but, uh,” Rebecca stammers, mind frantically casting out for something that’ll get Valencia off her case. For some reason, Nathaniel calling to chew her out floats to the top of her memory. She thinks of the drastic difference between his gruff, late-night reprimands and his kicked-puppy eyes from the next morning, and her heart lurches in her chest. She finds herself blurting, “It’s just that, Nathaniel’s dad’s kind of a bastard. I had to be careful to, you know, protect him.”

Valencia continues to stare at Rebecca through narrowed eyes. “You put his needs above your obsession with making everyone else uncomfortable?”

“I wouldn’t call it an obsession with making everyone else uncomfortable,” Rebecca grumbles. “I just like my friends to know what’s going on in my life.”

“No,” Heather says, “you like to hear yourself talk.”

“Mostly about yourself,” Valencia adds.

Rebecca rolls her eyes and lets out a put-upon sigh. “Okay, fine then. Yeah. I put his needs above my _obsession_ with making everyone uncomfortable.”

Valencia eyes her for a prolonged moment, and Rebecca finds herself holding her breath until she speaks.

“You must really care about him.”

She’s not sure why her response to the observation is to duck her head and she’s not sure why heat rushes up into her cheeks. But, whatever the reason, she can’t bring herself to look either of her friends in the eye even though she feels them watching her as she says, “Yeah, I do.”

“I mean, I don’t personally get it—he’s way too prudish for you—but that’s cool,” Valencia says after a beat, shrugging and mercifully turning off her scrutinizing stare.

“Thanks for the ringing endorsement,” Rebecca says with a grin, only half sarcastic.

“He’s a little better when you get to know him,” Heather says to Valencia, and Rebecca’s head snaps around to look at her roommate. “I’ve seen him unclench for a full five seconds, and it was almost like talking to someone with a personality.”

Something suspiciously close to jealousy twists tight in Rebecca’s gut.

“Yeah? Well, you should see him in bed,” she blurts out. “The boy works wonders with his mouth.”

“Ooooh-kay,” Heather says.

Rebecca averts her eyes as soon as Heather glances her way, feeling a rush of chagrin as she remembers there’s no point in boastful showboating when it comes to her.

“I know it’s my fault for asking about him in the first place,” Valencia says with a sigh, rolling her eyes heavenward, “but where’s your off button?”

“So you don’t want to hear all about how his enormous hands—”

Valencia inserts her fingers into her ears. “La, la, la.”

Rebecca gets up from the table with a self-satisfied grin, half-finished mug of coffee cradled in her hands. “Alright, well, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go masturbate now.”

“You don’t have to tell us what you’re doing! You can just leave!” Valencia yells after her, her shrill voice contrasting Heather’s low, drawn-out groan.

Rebecca keeps the smile fixed on her face until her bedroom door is closed behind her, when it drops sharply alongside her mood.

For a moment, she considers calling Dr. Akopian. Sudden, intense changes in mood have triggers, and talking out what the trigger is can help you address it in a healthy, mindful blah blah blah.

As she sets aside her coffee and throws herself down on her bed, Rebecca decides—for the millionth time since finding out about her mom’s plan to visit—the last thing she wants is to analyze why she’s feeling so shitty. Being mindful is overrated.

###

“How are you with your mouth, would you say?” Rebecca asks, popping her head into Nathaniel’s office first thing Monday morning and waggling her eyebrows at him.

She woke up this morning feeling giddy for some reason, a complete 180-degree pivot in mood from her weekend, which had been spent moping in her room and occasionally looking through the photos Hector, Josh and Valencia had posted of their night out.

Nathaniel chokes on the sip of coffee he’d just taken, and she already feels vindicated for making a beeline for his office.

“Excuse me?”

“Well, Valencia wanted to know more about our relationship, and I ended up bragging on your behalf.” She steps into the office, letting the door swing shut behind her, and lowers her voice, “And you know what they say. The best lies have a kernel of truth in them, so—?”

He juts his chin forward and raises his eyebrows. The gesture makes Rebecca grin. “What exactly are you asking me?”

“I thought I was pretty clear,” she says. “Do you spelunk? Are you willing to prune the hedges? Do you like to go down to vagina town?”

His distaste for her euphemisms is evident in the set of his mouth, and that only makes her cheeks ache as she grins harder.

“I don’t think this is a work-appropriate topic of discussion,” he says, a note of reprimand in his voice.

She’s all but desensitized to the ways he tries to wiggle out of conversations and, not even a little dissuaded, takes a seat as she says, “Alright fine, a different question: have you ever performed cunnilingus on a woman before? Like, do you know what it is?”

“Jesus, Rebecca!” He blanches.

“Just checking,” she says, holding up her hands in surrender.

“Shouldn’t you be working right now?”

She scoffs. “I got here before nine am. That’s, like, half my job right there.”

“It is not,” Nathaniel says, nostrils flaring a little.

“Fine, if that’s how you want to play it,” she says with a regretful shrug, making like she’s about to stand. “I’ll go write a brief or something. But just know that as soon as I leave this office that’s, what? Three for me and none for you.”

She pauses on the edge of her seat, raising her eyebrows at his blank confusion. After a few beats, it morphs into understanding.

“Oh, come on. This doesn’t count toward that. And we never said it was a competition—only that I was going to get you back.”

“I don’t know,” she says. “If I have five gotcha moments to your every one, it doesn’t need to be a formal competition. I win.”

“You can’t make rules up as you go along,” he says, leaning into his desk and staring her in the eye.

“I’m not.” She crosses her arms over her chest, leaning in, too. “This is definitely an ‘ask anyone and they’d agree with me’ type of situation.”

Nathaniel grits his teeth, and Rebecca tries not to look too pleased with herself.

“Fine. But this conversation doesn’t count.”

“Oh? Are you trying to tell me this has been you acting unruffled? That’s embarrassing, dude.”

“I—that’s—”

“Answer or I extend my lead.”

“Well it’s not like anyone’s given me a performance review before,” he snaps.

“I mean, if you did it right, you’d know,” she says, relishing the almost-purple color working its way up his neck.

“What exactly are you intending to do with this information anyway?” he asks suddenly.

Unexpectedly, she finds that she’s the one fumbling for words. It only lasts a second, but if Nathaniel’s intrigued eyebrow raise is any indication, he notices.

“I told you,” she spits out quickly, “I want to have convincing material for when I brag to my friends.”

“Have you considered not talking to your friends about your sex life?” She scrunches up her face, and he shakes his head in response. “Right. Who am I talking to?”

“You’re stalling,” she says with a smirk.

He breathes in a deep, deep breath and turns his attention back to his computer. “I’ve never gotten complaints.”

“Because you’re such a lost cause that women don’t even bother?”

Nathaniel’s typing falters. “Gee, Rebecca, I don’t know. You want their info so you can ask them yourself?”

“I mean, if you’re offering,” she says without missing a beat.

“Get out of my office.”

###

For a brief period, Rebecca had thought that her ability to get under Nathaniel’s skin meant he liked her. Maybe not romantically—she was far too preoccupied with forcing Josh Chan to usher eternal happiness into her life to be an impartial judge of that—but certainly enough to contribute in no small way to making the wedding of her dreams a reality.

Now, she’s pretty sure he’s just easily ruffled, pretty sure that his being ruffled by her has absolutely nothing to do with his feelings, whatever they may be.

Rebecca sighs and taps her pen against the open file on her desk, craning her neck to see if she can make him out at his desk.

When she catches Paula watching her, she offers what she hopes is a suggestive smile before turning back to her work.

The thing is, she shouldn’t care about his feelings either way. The bruises he’d left on her pride the day she’d come back into the office after her stupid, disastrous wedding-related breakdown still throb back to life in the middle of the night when she obsessively takes stock of her life, and she’s not ready to let go of her resentment. She’s not sure she ever will be.

Especially because it’s all so clear in her head: the way her stomach had been doing jumping jacks all morning, anticipating being back in the office. The way she’d considered scheduling a preemptive session with Dr. Akopian, worried that the attention and gossip would leave her feeling raw and used all over again. The way her heart had leaped up into her throat as soon as she caught a glimpse of him, his back facing the elevator as he crouched over a cubicle talking to Brad.

She’d been surprised at that, she remembers—how much seeing him again affected her.

She remembers the mess of anger and surprise that’d registered on his face when he’d noticed her and the way it’d turned quickly into indifference so frigid, she’d felt the sting of it across the office. Any of the excitement she’d been feeling had been quickly snuffed out by dread.

She remembers slinking out of his office to pack up her things, constantly casting her eyes to his door and expecting him to come out and show at least an inkling of regret. And then hoping he’d come out to say goodbye.

When he hadn’t, Rebecca’d given herself over to anger, the kind that snowballs and snowballs until she’d found herself densely packed in her own frigid indifference.

Just thinking about it brings stinging beads of sweat to the back of her neck.

Rebecca rubs them away, banishing her reverie as well. Not entirely—she keeps the memories locked in a box in the back of her mind, easily accessed when her fondness for Nathaniel worms its way back into her chest.

She’s spent enough time fanning misguided flames for men who want nothing to do with her, after all.

This time, she’s in control.

She intends to keep it that way.

###

Of course, she has to remind herself of the past in order to keep herself in check a lot these days.

“What are you doing down here?” Rebecca asks when Paula meets her in the foyer of the office’s building the next morning. “And why are you looking at me like that? Do I have schmear on my face?”

“No, there’s—well, actually, yeah,” Paula says, swiping at the corner of Rebecca’s mouth with her thumb.

“Thanks,” Rebecca says, using both hands to swipe at the skin around her mouth to catch anything Paula missed.

“I’m not here on schmear patrol, though.” There’s an excited gleam in Paula’s eye just on the side of mania.

Rebecca studies her, not sure how to feel but leaning toward exasperated, and says, “You’re jumpy. Did Tim accidentally knock the sugar into the coffee grounds again?”

“I hope not,” Paula says, hitting the button for the elevator. “I barely got anything done for a week because Nathaniel wouldn’t let us just throw it out and get new coffee, and I refused to drink that crap.”

“Did Karen try to run one of her cardio mambo classes in the break room?”

“Why would that be exciting?” Paula shoots Rebecca an exasperated look as they step into the car. “Or news?”

Rebecca shrugs.

“Man, you’re rusty,” Paula says.

“At what?”

“Gossiping about your love life,” Paula says, bumping her shoulder into Rebecca’s.

Rebecca raises her eyebrows, surprised even though she really should have guessed. “There’s something gossip-worthy?”

“I don’t know,” Paula says, waggling her eyebrows. “You tell me.”

The elevator stops at their floor, and even before they get off, Rebecca can tell the office is abuzz, distracted.

She’s grinning to herself, thinking about how annoyed Nathaniel probably is, until she rounds the reception desk and sees a bunch of her coworkers crowded around her cubicle.

Because there’s a giant flower arrangement sitting in the middle of her desk.

“Whoa,” Rebecca says.

“Those are We Just Banged flowers, right?” Paula asks. “I mean, they have to be. What else would he send this for?”

Rebecca makes a funny face at her best friend before approaching her desk, a peculiar kind of lightheadedness making her feel faint.

“Beat it,” she hears Paula tell the crowd, but she doesn’t look up to see if they listen. Instead, she plucks the card from amidst the roses and baby’s breath and opens it.

_2-1? –N_

Rebecca rolls her eyes, but immediately tacks it up in her cubicle next to a picture of her, Valencia, and Heather.

“So?” Paula prompts.

“Hm?” Rebecca asks, letting her fingers skim over the soft petals.

“ _Are_ they We Just Banged flowers? That’s a classic rich-guy move.”

“No, it is not.”

“Oh it absolutely is,” Paula says, insistent. “I mean, gifts after sex, that’s definitely a guy thing in general. But something this fancy—rich-guy thing.”

Rebecca scrunches her nose as she moves the surprisingly hefty vase from her desk up to the counter above. “I don’t think I’ve ever been given a gift after sex.”

Actually, she can’t remember the last time she’d been given a gift from a guy at all. The first thing that comes to mind is Robert’s restraining order.

She quickly shakes that thought from her head and gingerly removes one of the roses from the water, avoiding thorns, to study it more closely.

“Huh,” she hears Paula saying, but she pays more attention to the flower she’s spinning between her forefinger and thumb as she settles in her chair. “Scott gave me the guitar pick he’d been using the night we met.” Rebecca’s so preoccupied, she almost misses it when Paula says, “At that Christian rock concert.”

“I’m sorry,” Rebecca says, leaning down into the hidey-hole so she can see Paula. “You met Scott where now?”

Paula nods, her expression faraway. “Yeah. He was filling in as a favor to one of his college acapella friends, and I’d gone because one of my girlfriends was really into the drummer.”

“How selfless of you.”

“Not really.” Paula waggles her eyebrows, refocusing on Rebecca. “Not when you consider that I met my husband, and she didn’t even get laid.”

Rebecca snickers and then softens. “So do you still have the pick?”

“Oh, god, I don’t even know,” Paula says. “We’ve moved around enough…probably not.”

She coos her disappointment.

Paula waves that away, though. “It’s no big deal. It was basically the consolation prize for the fact that he didn’t go down on me, and, honestly, I would have preferred the cunnilingus.”

Rebecca frowns, nodding. “Fair.”

“Wait,” Paula says, eyeing the flowers with sudden suspicion. “Is that what those are? Are they consolation roses?”

“God no,” Rebecca says. “Nathaniel is very gifted in the oral arts.”

Paula shudders.

“What?” Rebecca asks.

“I don’t know,” she says, her frown deepening. “But suddenly it’s all too real that you’re sleeping with our boss, and I think I need you to not tell me another detail.”

Rebecca pouts out her lower lip.

“I know,” Paula commiserates. “I’m kinda disappointed, too.”

“Well, suit yourself.”

Paula nods and turns to her computer, so Rebecca does the same, sniffing the rose one more time before setting it aside.

###

“It’s like you don’t know me at all,” Rebecca says about twenty minutes later—because that’s how long it took her mind to wander away from work—as she leans in Nathaniel’s door, the rose pinched between her fingers.

Nathaniel’s eyebrows are high on his forehead before he even pulls his attention away from paperwork long enough to look at her. “I’m sure you’re right,” he says, a spark of playfulness igniting in his eyes when he notices the rose. “But what makes you say so?”

“It _never_ bothers me to be the center of attention,” she says, stepping into the office. “Especially if I’m the center of attention because of some big, romantic gesture.”

He studies her and then opens his mouth to say something. At the last second, though, his expression shifts, and he looks mischievous. “Never, huh?”

“Never,” she repeats, wishing for the millionth time in the year and a half since they’ve known each other that she could peer into his brain, even just for a second.

“Noted.”

He looks like he’s about to dismiss her, so—because she’s bored and for no other reasons, obviously—she blurts the first that comes to her mind to prolong the conversation. “The arrangement’s beautiful.”

“Only the best for my fake girlfriend.”

She smiles, about to comment on how, in the right light, he’s a total romantic, when he continues.

“I assume the post you made about them is going over well?”

“Right,” Rebecca says. “Social media. Appearances. The bouquet is perfect for that.”

He shoots her a funny look. “That was kind of the point.”

“Sure was,” she says, bright and even.

He rolls his eyes at her, and she breathes a sigh of relief.

To Nathaniel, she’s just an erratic, unreasonably emotional person. It’s the perfect cover because, in some ways, it’s entirely true.

She throws up a wall in front of that train of thought and then presents him with the rose. “For you.”

His eyebrows return to the vicinity of his hairline. “I don’t want that.”

“Well, too bad. I want you to have it.”

“I got them for you,” he says like he thinks she’s forgotten. “Not for myself.”

“Oh, my god,” she says, setting it on top of the tray in the corner of his desk. “I’m trying to do a cute thing. Just let it happen, dammit!”

He eyes the flower skeptically but doesn’t move it.

She shakes her head and starts backing for the door. “The score is still two to zero.”

He doesn’t look at her—his eyes drifting from the rose back to his work—as he says, “For now.”

###

When she pushes into his office for lunch the next day, she notices the rose is still on the corner of his desk. Since she’s been gone, though, he’d trimmed the stem short and set it in a tumbler with a small measure of water at the bottom.

She grins, catching his eye, and is about to tease him for putting up a fight when he so clearly cherishes the flower when she notices the Bluetooth piece in his ear.

He nods at her in greeting, looking anything but playful at the moment. In fact, the harshness of his expression makes Rebecca clench up, freezing where she is halfway to the chairs in front of his desk.

“I’m telling you, Jodi,” he says, turning his chair toward the window. “We filed those reports over a week ago.”

With his gaze no longer on her, Rebecca takes a deep breath, wills herself to relax.

“I can assure you that they’re accurate,” Nathaniel says, his voice barely civil.

She takes a seat, setting her takeout on the edge of his desk and finding her place in her book.

“No, I don’t need to double-check with the accounting department.” Nathaniel’s voice starts to morph into background noise as she picks up the thread of the narrative. That is, until he snaps and shouts, “Because I personally reviewed them because I oversee this entire branch!”

Rebecca glances up from her book to find Nathaniel holding himself rigid, tension in his neck and back. He cuts his eyes to her, and she wrinkles her nose at him in a silent comment: _bit much, don’t you think?_

He frowns and clears his throat. “Yes, I know you’re simply following orders…Yes…Fine…Then you tell my father, if he wants to follow up, he can contact me himself. He has my number.”

When he hangs up, Rebecca flashes him a big smile. “So…”

He rips the earpiece off and glares at her, a clear warning.

She waggles her eyebrows and nudges a smoothie across the desk. “I got strawberry today because I was feeling whimsical, but don’t worry. There’s still a bunch of disgusting green shit and supplements in there, too.”

Nathaniel closes his eyes, and if she’s not mistaken, some of the stiffness eases from his posture. “Fine.”

“It’d better be,” she says, already turning back to her book. “I’m not going to get you another one.”

She can feel his eyes on her, hears his grunt of acknowledgement, and smiles.

She’s only read a couple pages when Nathaniel’s voice cuts back into her concentration.

“Maya,” he barks into the intercom, “resend the budget reports for the year to-date.”

“Yes, sir.” Maya somehow sounds even more timid than usual. And maybe like her mouth is full of food.

Rebecca clears her throat pointedly.

“Thanks,” Nathaniel adds with a dramatic sigh.

“Oh, um, you’re welcome. Can I…is there anything else I can get you?”

He scrubs at his eyes for a moment before responding. “No.”

A moment passes, but Nathaniel’s distress remains thick in the air, raising the hairs at the back of Rebecca’s neck.

As casually as she can manage, she sets aside her book and asks, “So what’s with the micromanagement?”

“That was _not_ micromanagement,” Nathaniel says, tossing her an almost wounded look before taking a sip of his smoothie.

“I’m not talking about you and Maya.”

She watches as he processes that, watches the almost comical shift from mildly annoyed to guarded.

“Taking over a firm doesn’t happen overnight,” he says.

“Sure,” she says, and then takes a beat, choosing her words carefully. “Maybe I don’t have a perfect sense of what it takes to fully assimilate a branch firm, but aren’t we kinda past that? Haven’t _you_ gotten us past it?”

“Our family’s reputation is at stake. We have to be diligent.”

Rebecca swallows back the urge to scoff, a frown weighing down the corners of her mouth. “There’s a line between diligence and controlling.”

Nathaniel opens his mouth to say something, anger clearly mounting again, but she talks on.

“I mean, Jim and Tim’s briefs have climbed up to a tenth-grade reading level and are actually, like, comprehensible. Paula hasn’t bartered someone’s life for an hour of peace and productivity for ages. I haven’t left the office in the middle of the day just because no one stopped me for at least eight months.” She pauses, letting the evidence sink in. “Dare I say, we’re practically a functioning law firm these days.”

He’s silent for a prolonged moment, his expression unreadable.

“That’s because of you,” Rebecca pushes.

For a second, it looks like he might smile. Instead, though, he drops his eyes to his desk and clears his throat. “I have a lot of work to do.”

Rebecca blinks, dumbfounded. “Okay…well, don’t let me stop you.”

“I never do.”

She lets out a half-hearted chuckle at that, but her stomach shifts uneasily. Try as she might, she finds herself unable to fully refocus on her novel, instead spending the lunch break watching Nathaniel out of the corner of her eye.

It doesn’t help her understand him even a little.

Then again, she reminds herself, that’s not really the point of these lunches.

###

“Hey, roomie.” Heather greets Rebecca as she plops onto one of the stools at the mostly-empty Home Base bar. “What’ll it be?”

“Whatever white wine you have handy,” Rebecca says, dropping her briefcase to the ground. “Please and thank you.”

Heather hums and sets to preparing the drink.

“How’s work?” Rebecca asks her.

“Two wine moms got into it at the start of my shift.”

“Oh, yeah? What about?”

“Apparently the only reason Alison’s getting better grades than Magdalena is because Alison’s mom is, you know, _running the bases_ with the math teacher.” Heather slides a chilled glass across the counter.

Rebecca takes a sip. “Well, at least they had the wherewithal to use euphemisms in front of the kids.”

“Oh, they absolutely did not,” Heather says with a grin, shaking her head. “And the missed opportunity nearly killed me.”

“I’m happy you pulled through.”

“I’m not. That was the peak of my shift.”

“Bummer. Sorry.”

Heather shrugs. “It is what it is, so.”

One of the few other patrons starts pounding their glass against the counter and, with a put-upon sigh, Heather goes to see what they want.

“So what’s up with you?” she asks after cashing the man out.

“What do you mean?”

“To what do I owe the pleasure of your enormous tip that’ll make my shift worth all the unimaginative customers?”

Rebecca snorts and then sighs. “I knew you’d be here late and I really didn’t want to go home to our empty house.”

“Isn’t it Thursday?” Heather asks, cocking her head.

“Yeah…so?”

“So isn’t that your regular therapy day?”

Rebecca traces the rim of her glass with her pointer finger, not looking at Heather. “I cancelled.”

Heather grunts. “You’ve been doing that a lot lately.”

“It has nothing to do with—”

“I wasn’t saying it did,” Heather says. “Though it obviously does.”

Rebecca pouts. “Yeah.”

“Can I say something you don’t want to hear?”

“Isn’t that, like, your whole shtick?”

“I’m trying to be, like, respectful of your needs or whatever.”

Rebecca titters and then throws back a large gulp of wine. “Okay. Hit me.”

“You’ve done some hard-ass work on yourself this past year, and I think it sucks that you’re giving someone else the power to undo some of it.”

Rebecca opens her mouth and then closes it again, clenching her jaw tight.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, the way you’re processing is still an improvement. Like, Rebecca from two years ago might have paid someone her entire life’s savings to become her indentured servant or something.”

“I would not have!”

Heather continues like Rebecca didn’t even speak. “Right now the only other life you’re messing with is Nathaniel’s, which, on top of being something he totally opted into, has been pretty amusing to witness.”

Rebecca rolls her eyes.

“Just, like, if you’re not gonna go to therapy and work out what’s really going on here, at least be careful how hard you jerk that guy’s chain.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Heather looks at her like maybe she’s the stupidest person to ever walk the planet, and Rebecca frowns back.

“It means the guy knew what he was getting into, but I don’t think he really _knows_ what he got into. Do you know what I’m saying?”

Rebecca thinks back on her day—on the more honest reason she’d wound up here, drinking at Home Base. Her mind lingers on the way Nathaniel pointedly avoided looking at her every time they ended up at the coffee maker together and had left the office for lunch without acknowledging her or bothering to cancel their everyday, albeit unspoken, plans.

“I don’t think Nathaniel gets into anything he isn’t certain he can get out of without a second thought,” she says, her voice sounding steely in her own ears.

Heather _hmm_ s like she knows something Rebecca doesn’t.

###

“Attention!” Nathaniel claps his hands together and everyone in the office stirs out of their Friday-afternoon trance to look at him. “I wanted to say that, while most everyone’s work has been acceptable these days, there have been some outliers.”

When Nathaniel’s eyes lock onto Rebecca, she feels a peculiar itching sensation in the vicinity of her chest. When he quirks an eyebrow, tipping his head in her direction ever-so-slightly, the sensation absolutely does not get worse.

“For an example of what _not_ to do, I’m going to leave this brief in the conference room.” He pulls a file from under his arm and holds it up. “Read it at your leisure. And remember people, you can always be aiming higher!”

Curiosity piqued, Rebecca only manages to wait a minute after he returns to his office before she goes to investigate.

Paula is right on her heels. “That was weird, right?”

“Uh-huh,” Rebecca agrees, snatching the file out from the center of the conference room table.

“Whose is it?” Paula asks, leaning in over Rebecca’s shoulder. “I bet it’s Tim’s. It’s gotta be Tim’s, right?”

The first thing Rebecca notices is that it’s the brief outlining the latest Young property acquisition—her client, her case.

The next thing…

“Cookie?” Paula asks even as Rebecca storms out of the room, file in hand. “What’s wrong?”

“Gotcha,” Nathaniel says as soon as she stomps into his office.

“Are you freaking kidding me?”

“Well, yes,” he says, looking her up and down with amusement. “Isn’t that kind of the point?”

“But it’s not even my work,” she says, reaching across his desk so she can flap the pages in his face.

“I know. You’re way too competent to actually write a bad brief.”

She doesn’t allow the compliment to soften her. She _doesn’t_.

“Well?”

He grabs the file from her hands so she’ll stop waving it in his face. “What?”

“Who did write it?”

“I borrowed heavily from Tim,” he says, sounding entirely too satisfied with himself as he leafs through his slanderous work.

“Is that why you were avoiding me yesterday?” she demands. “Because you were working on this?”

“Avoiding you?”

“Yeah, I bet you cut out early so you could celebrate, you smug, righteous bastard.”

“I did not write this,” he holds up the brief, “during work hours, and I didn’t cut out early. I was needed at Plimpton, Plimpton and Plimpton headquarters for some meetings.”

She feels a hot, sticky tar pit of chagrin blooming inside her stomach. Of course he was just working. That’s all he ever does. It wasn’t some big, pointed gesture. Of course.

Grabbing desperate hold of her composure and squeezing, she switches tracks back to the important matter at hand.

“What if Tim had realized what you did? Huh? What would have happened then?”

“He’s not sharp enough.” As an after-thought, Nathaniel adds, “If he even bothers to read it at all.”

“You’re not putting that back out there,” she says, moving to snatch it back out of his hands.

“Sure I am,” he says, and her anger flares bright once again, distracting her from the embarrassment.

“But you made your point—you can get me back—so we can drop it now, the whole thing.”

“No,” he says, drawing out the word for emphasis, and she feels a rather potent urge to slap the smug grin off his face. “Part of the appeal is that I make it clear to everyone there’s no preferential treatment at play here. The other part is that I got you back _and_ proved you wrong.”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

“Sometimes it bothers you to be the center of attention.”

“You’re so—argh!”

“Two to one,” he calls after her as she starts to stalk out.

“Fine,” she says, whirling around. “But the kid gloves are coming off, do you hear me?”

“I don’t play dirty unless I expect to get as good as I give,” Nathaniel says, infuriatingly calm.

Rebecca makes some mocking noises at him before letting the door slam shut in her wake.

###

“You’re here awfully late,” Nathaniel says, approaching Rebecca’s cubicle a few hours later, briefcase in hand. He looks pointedly around at the otherwise-empty office. “What’s that about?”

She huffs and throws him her best withering glare. “Damage control.”

He hums, still totally unbothered by her anger. “About that—buy you conciliatory dinner?” She must look confused because he adds, “Or we could simply go to a restaurant, take a picture for you to post, and leave.”

She’s not sure what exactly causes the twist in her stomach, disappointment or interest or guilt or more anger, but she decides it’s best not to dwell. Dr. Akopian _is_ always telling her she doesn’t have to chase the spiraling-thoughts rabbit down into the hole. She means it as a method of avoiding anxiety attacks, but still. It applies well enough.

She swallows hard—her throat feeling like she drank a bottle of paste—and says, “Right. Friday night. Classic date night.”

“Mm-hmm,” Nathaniel agrees, suddenly very interested in his nail beds. Rebecca wonders if she’s ever seen him well and truly fidget before, or if this is as close as he gets. “You up for it?”

“Uh, yeah,” she says after a beat, saving her work and shutting down her computer for the weekend. “Let me just…You wanna meet me at my place? I’ll change before we go.”

He taps the counter around her cubicle twice with his open palm. “Great. See you in a few.”

He turns to leave, then stops and turns back to her.

“What are you doing?”

“I’ll walk you to your car.”

She narrows her eyes. “Why?”

He winces. “It’s nothing. Just…”

“Just?”

“It’s bad form, letting one of my subordinates be the last to leave the office.”

“Oh, my god, dude,” Rebecca says, a comment about his father on the tip of her tongue. Remembering how quickly he’d shut down the other day, though, she swallows it back down. It’s not really her place to nag him about those pathologies. They’re not even really friends, after all.

“What are you even worried I’d do,” she asks as she falls into step with him, forcing lightness into her voice. “Wallpaper the place with a memo about what an irresponsible boss you are?”

“Are you saying you wouldn’t after what I did to you today?”

“Good point,” she says, and then, because she can’t help herself even if they’re not friends, she adds, “It’d be as much of a lie as that stupid brief.”

“I know,” he says, just a touch too fast.

Vindication balloons up in her chest, and she grins at her warped reflection in the elevator doors.

###

“Oh, hey, V,” Rebecca says after she gets the front door unlocked. “I didn’t know you were coming over tonight.”

“My last meeting of the day ended early,” she says, glancing up from the laptop partially balanced on her thigh, partially on Heather’s. “So I had some free time.”

“Hey, Stick,” Heather says, nodding at Nathaniel, who remains in the doorway even as Rebecca walks around the back of the couch to see what her and Valencia are looking at.

Heather laughs at the obnoxious sigh he lets out, and Rebecca can smell the wine on her breath.

“Wait, are you guys having rosé night without me?” Rebecca asks, pouting out her lower lip. “Oh, my god, _and_ you’re ordering from the fondue place?”

“Do you want to join us?” Valencia asks like she already knows the answer.

“Yes!” Rebecca says, crawling over the back of the couch and clumsily inserting herself between Heather and Valencia. “Gimme the computer, I need to review your order.”

Nathaniel coughs lightly. “Rebecca, what about our dinner plans?”

“You could stay, too. I guess,” Valencia says without enthusiasm. Rebecca elbows her in the ribs—she simply shrugs in response—and then turns her pleading eyes on Nathaniel.

“It’s girls’ night,” she says.

“Got it.” He nods solemnly. “I’ll see myself out.”

Maybe it’s because he’s been all over the place the past week in a relatable and endearing—if completely confusing—sort of way but Rebecca’s heart lurches extra hard at the loneliness she recognizes in his pinched face.

“No,” she says, too loud. “We’ll both stay. You’ve been invited.”

“But it’s girls’ night,” he says, like the idea of him being counted in is absurd.

“I want you to stay,” Rebecca says, surprised to find that she means it.

Valencia grumbles predictably in response, but Heather clears her throat pointedly.

Rebecca turns to look at her and, when Heather inclines her head, eyebrows arched high, she pitches her voice low enough that even Valencia won’t hear her say, “Drop it.”

Heather shrugs. “Yeah,” she says to Nathaniel. “Stay.”

“Are you sure?” He addresses the question to Heather. “I wouldn’t want to be _interrupting_ anything.”

Rebecca continues to watch her roommate as she gives him a jerky shake of her head, lips pressed tight and eyes full of…some message Rebecca doesn’t totally understand.

“This is a casual hangout, dude,” she says. “Just sit your ass down.”

When Nathaniel obeys, walking over and sinking into the papasan chair with a distasteful frown, Rebecca squints more closely at Heather.

“Stop it,” Heather says, shifting to pull her foot out from under Rebecca’s thigh.

“I can’t, I’m looking for the signs that you developed magical powers.”

“Girl, what are you talking about?”

She points across the room to Nathaniel. “You told him to sit, and he just, like, did.”

“I’m still in the room,” he reminds her.

Heather shrugs. “Our unlikely bond transcends male pride.”

“Can you two focus, please?” Valencia gestures to the laptop.

“Right,” Rebecca says, “Gooey, cheesy goodness.”

“Please don’t call it that,” Valencia says. “I’d love to eat it without puking.”

“Whoa, slow the hell down,” Heather says, grabbing the laptop out of Rebecca’s hands when she starts adding several items to their order. “I’m paying for this with a bartender’s salary, remember?”

“I’ve got it,” Nathaniel says, already shifting so he can pull his wallet out.

“See,” Heather says, catching the card he throws across the room like a Frisbee. “You’re already a useful member of the group. Welcome to honorary gurlhood.”

Rebecca laughs at the horrified expression on his face, which only makes it grow more pronounced.

###

“Alright,” Heather says, coming back from the kitchen with a new bottle of wine and two additional glasses. “The name of the game is DRunKrealistic. Every time the protagonist acts like a sock puppet with the controlling hand of the patriarchy up her ass, you take a drink.”

“DRunKrealistic,” Rebecca says, pulling her feet up so Heather can shuffle past to get back to her seat. “That’s clever—did you just come up with that?”

“I mean, I wanna say yes, but there are several cocktail napkins in the Home Base dumpster that could prove I’m a liar so.”

“Heather and I picked out a couple made-for-TV Christmas specials for the occasion, since it’s almost December and everything,” Valencia says, passing Heather her glass for a refill.

“No secular holiday romance?” Rebecca asks, widening her eyes at Valencia.

“We didn’t know you’d be here. Stop looking at me like that.”

“You want in, dude?” Heather asks, holding up the bottle in Nathaniel’s direction.

He hesitates.

“It’s not like you have to worry about driving home, right?” Valencia says.

“I…” He starts to answer, but just as quickly trails off. Rebecca feels his panicked eyes boring into her.

She swallows, not looking at him when she says, “Yeah, he’s staying.”

“God, I better not hear I single peep from your room tonight,” Valencia says, narrowing her eyes. “I did not sign up for a night of listening to you have weird sex.”

“Excuse me,” Rebecca says, feeling her cheeks flush and still pointedly avoiding Nathaniel’s eyes. “I do not have weird sex. Because sex isn’t weird. Yeah, it’s a very natural and beautiful expression of intimacy.”

Valencia rolls her eyes. “Well when you express your intimacy later, use a gag or something.”

“Ohh-kay,” Heather says, “time to start the game because I’m definitely not drunk enough for this conversation. Stick, get over here.” She pats the chaise next to the couch. “You’re playing.”

“I don’t know that I’m…” Nathaniel seems to consider each woman in the room during the weighty pause. Rebecca raises her eyebrows: a warning to tread carefully. Eventually, he finishes, “Qualified.”

“And I’ll be sure to report the involvement of man to the official league later,” Heather says, deadpan. “Get over here.”

Rebecca doesn’t even bother suppressing her smirk as, again, Nathaniel does as he’s told.

###

“Oh, yup, take a drink,” Heather says, holding her glass up in the air to toast the protagonist, who’s climbing into bed on screen.

“Nothing’s happening,” Nathaniel says, even as he obediently swallows a swig of rosé.

“Au contraire,” Rebecca says, tilting her head back so she can look up at him from her spot on the floor under Heather’s seat. “She’s going to bed.”

“And women don’t do that?” he asks, looking unimpressed.

“It’s not the action, it’s the way she’s doing it,” Rebecca says.

“Women don’t really curl their hair or retouch their makeup for bedtime,” Heather explains. “And they definitely don’t wear a bra if they can help it.”

“Bed is not a place you care about looking cute,” Rebecca says, _tsk_ -ing the movie.

“Being in your house in general is not a place you care about looking cute,” Heather says.

“You both look cute right now,” Nathaniel says, almost accusatory.

Rebecca’s wine flush gets unexpectedly intense for a moment.

“I was expecting company, that’s different,” Heather volleys immediately.

“Please,” Valencia says, “I am not company.”

“Girl, I once saw you put on makeup to get the mail,” Heather says, poking Valencia in the thigh with her toes. “You can’t comment here.”

“Shut up, you know how judgey my carrier is!”

“Glass houses, V.”

“Whatever.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “And _I_ can’t comment, but Mister Straight White Man over there is allowed?”

“He’s gathering information,” Rebecca says, patting Nathaniel’s leg. “We’re allowing it in the name of science.”

He twitches under her touch, and she frowns up at him.

“How about you kiss my ass in the name of science?”

Thankful for the distraction, Rebecca turns and puckers up her lips, making sloppy kissy noises at Valencia, who throws a balled-up napkin at her face with unfair accuracy.

“Guys, you’re missing it,” Heather says. “She just popped out of bed with perfect hair. Take a drink.”

“Don’t see how that’s unrealistic,” Nathaniel says, and Rebecca’s about the comment on the astoundingly low arc of his learning curve when he adds, “I wake up with perfect hair every day, after all.”

“Weak,” Heather says.

Valencia scoffs.

Rebecca throws the napkin at him.

When he flashes an impish smile in response, she swears the lights dim for a moment.

###

Valencia’s still around when Rebecca decides to go to bed sometime after midnight, so Nathaniel trails her to her room, hands shoved deep in his pockets.

“So,” she says, bouncing on the edge of her bed and waving jazz hands at him. “Sleepover.”

“Yeah.” He frowns at her and then eases the door shut behind him. “It’s probably for the best if I sneak out.” He nods toward the porch. “Right?”

“I—Valencia’s staying over. She’ll notice when you’re gone in the morning.”

He nods, granting that. “So maybe I should wait till she goes to bed and sleep on the couch.”

Having him spend the night with no warning definitely goes above and beyond their contract—their actual, literal contract—but even knowing that it’s unfair, she can’t help the tetchy sting building behind her eyes.

“If she sees you, she’s gonna have questions,” she snaps at him.

“Right.”

“It’s not a big deal, okay? It’ll be good practice, even.”

“Right,” he says again, still standing in the doorway.

“Which clearly you need,” she says, pointedly looking him up and down.

“We’re alone right now,” he says. “I don’t need to sell our fake relationship to you.”

“Yeah,” Rebecca says, standing and snatching her pajamas off her bed. “God forbid we act like we like each other even a little bit if it’s not for show, right?”

“That’s not exactly—”

“Can you move?” she barks. “I need to use the bathroom.”

He takes a tentative step further into her room, and she slams the door behind her.

When she comes back, teeth brushed and face scrubbed clean and mood a mirror pep talk’s worth more forgiving, she finds him sitting in the middle of her floor. Like her, he’s changed into comfier clothes, dress shirt and slacks traded for a thin white t-shirt and what Rebecca assumes are his gym shorts.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Resigning myself to a night on your floor.”

She rolls her eyes. “I’m not going to make you sleep on the floor, dude.”

He raises his eyebrows at her. “It’s not…” He coughs lightly. “Your bed is not very spacious.”

“You’re doing me a favor. Actually, like a long series of favors. So there’s just no way I’m going to let you sleep on the floor.”

He still looks dubious, so Rebecca grabs Ruth Gator Ginsburg from where she’s leaning against the television stand and sets her in the middle of the bed.

“There. Now it’s basically two beds,” she says.

“Not even kind of,” Nathaniel says, but he stands up anyway. And then they’re far too close together, lingering there at the foot of her bed.

Rebecca’s eyes trickle down the length of him—has he always been so neck-crampingly tall or do the shorts create an illusion of extra length—and, suddenly, her t-shirt dress feels nonexistently thin.

Nathaniel drags his hand through his hair and gestures to the bed with the other. “Ladies first.”

“Thank you,” she says with an affected squeak, and then curtsies.

When she pulls out of it and their eyes meet, the urge to make a self-deprecating joke and beat him to the punch is strong. But then he bends ever-so-slightly at the waist in a suggestion of a bow.

Rebecca feels all the wine she’d had that night swirl up into her head at once. She bites her lip to keep a giddy explosion of laughter from bursting out of her because she’s filled with the absurd notion that any loud noises might shatter the moment and take them back in time to just a few minutes ago when things were uncomfortable and argumentative.

“Is this how you say goodnight?” he asks, his voice soft. Like he senses it, too.

Before she can do something inappropriate in response—like fist the collar of his shirt and see how much deeper he’d have to bow to be within kissing distance—she does a chaotic shimmy and then crawls up onto the bed.

She pulls Ruth Gator onto her stomach as Nathaniel gingerly slides in beside her. Once he’s settled, hands folded over his stomach and eyes fixed determinedly on the ceiling, she sets the stuffed animal back down and turns off the lamp on the nightstand.

“This bed is stupidly short,” he says after a moment of stillness.

Rebecca lets out a breathy laugh. “Have you ever thought that maybe you’re freakishly tall?”

“No, I don’t think that’s it,” he says. “The problem is this bed was made for midgets.”

“I’m not that small.”

“You are,” he says, and Rebecca feels him dragging his body a little higher on the bed. “One might even call it freakish.”

She reaches past their barrier to smack him on the chest. He grunts in response, and then they both fall silent.

“Hey, Nathaniel?”

“Yes?”

“How’d you like honorary gurlhood?”

“I refuse to answer that.”

“You loooved it,” Rebecca drawls.

“It was a fine enough way to spend an evening.”

“Oh, you really loved it.”

“Goodnight, Rebecca.”

She grins into the darkness as she shifts onto her side, pressing her face into Ruth Gator’s neck. Nuzzling into it, her lips find the patch of fuzz that’s matted from a tea-in-bed incident a few months ago. The rough texture makes her lip tingle, and Rebecca thinks of Nathaniel’s ever-present stubble.

“Nathaniel?” She whispers in case he’s already fallen asleep.

“Hmm?”

“I’m not messing with your life, am I?”

She’s met with silence that stretches on and on and on.

“Got it,” she says, feeling her entire body flush with regret.

“No, I was…No,” he says, sounding anything but certain. He takes a beat, though, and when he speaks again, his voice is much more confident. “No, you’re not.”

“But you’ll tell me?” she asks. “If I go too far?”

“Didn’t know you had any conception of too far.” His voice is playful but there’s a sharp edge of seriousness there, too.

She presses her face harder into the plush of Ruth Gator Ginsburg, hoping maybe he won’t catch the bitterness in her voice when she says, “I’m trying to develop one.”

When he doesn’t answer for several moments, she assumes she’s been more successful than she’d meant to be.

But just as she’s about to roll over on her other side and attempt sleep, he says, “I’ll tell you.”

“Okay,” she says.

“Okay,” he agrees.

###

Rebecca blinks awake, roused from sleep by the feverish warmth trapped in by her comforter that’s just on the wrong side of cozy.

When her eyes fully adjust, the first thing she notices is that Ruth Gator’s been tossed onto her floor. The second is that, without the barrier between them, Nathaniel’s rolled into her, arm wrapped around her waist and face buried in her neck.

She holds herself still for a second, allowing herself to be immersed in the onslaught of sensory information. After a moment, the ever-intensifying heat becomes too much, though, and she presses her thighs tight. In doing so, she realizes her t-shirt dress has ridden up to her hips over the course of the night. Her old, thinning underwear feels like far too little cover with the entire length of Nathaniel pressed against her.

Trying her best not to disturb him, she starts to wiggle in an attempt to get things back in place. He stirs, though—because of course he does—his nose skimming up the side of her neck to her hairline and his stubble catching on the sensitive skin.

An entire fucking hot spring bubbles to life in the pit of Rebecca’s stomach.

“I wasn’t trying to rub myself into your crotch,” she blurts.

Nathaniel hums, the sound halfway between confused and contented, and the soft rumble sends ripples through the all-too-active pool low in her stomach. He seems to wake even more a second later because he adds, “What?”

“The—I wasn’t—”

Rebecca flushes and shifts in his arms, turning enough to see his face. When their eyes meet, Nathaniel seems to fully come into consciousness.

“Oh, god,” he says, snatching his arm away and jerking back with so much force that he topples off the far end of the bed.

_Maybe it is a bit small_ , she thinks, and then sits up, fisting the hem of her pajamas and stretching it over her knees. “Smooth.”

“Fuck,” Nathaniel says from the floor, then lets out a low groan.

Before she can peek over the side to see if he needs any help, there’s a knock at the door.

“I don’t want to know what’s going on in there.” Valencia’s voice floats through the door. “But since it sounds like you’re awake, I thought I’d let you know there’s coffee.”

“Great!” Rebecca chirps back, her voice so falsely cheery, it hurts her own ears.

###

“We need to talk,” she says, storming into his office early Monday morning.

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Nathaniel says. He’s sitting on his couch, sorting a stack of papers into smaller stacks around him. “We agreed it was an accident—no harm, no foul.”

“That’s not what we need to talk about,” Rebecca says.

“Oh,” he says, pausing to look up at her.

“I mean, it is, but not because of that.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Care to unpack what you mean? I don’t have all day.”

Rebecca studies him with narrowed eyes for a second, and then crosses the room to move his papers to the ground.

“What are you—?” He starts to ask before she plops down right next to him, draping her legs over his thighs. He immediately shifts out from under her, standing up. “Hey!”

“That,” Rebecca says, “We need to talk about that.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” he says, turning and pacing away from her.

“You wig out every time I touch you.”

“I do not,” he says, but she can see the blood working its way up into his neck and cheeks.

“I mean, not all the time,” she grants. “We seemed totally natural at Darryl’s party.”

Maybe she’s imagining things, but it looks like he swallows hard at the mention of that night. “See? Everything’s fine, then.”

“Dude.”

He drops into his desk chair with an irritated grunt. “What?”

“It’s like the theater,” she says, standing from the couch and crossing around the desk as she explains. “If we can break character that easily, then the performance is gonna be totally unbelievable.”

“What are you saying?” he asks, wary eyes tracking her.

“I’m saying…” She comes to a stop next to the chair and spins him ninety degrees so he’s facing her. “We need to do some more rehearsal.”

He stares up at her, expression unreadable. Still, there’s something in his eyes that makes Rebecca’s stomach roll over with a pleasant swoop.

“Fine,” he says, his voice lacking volume.

“Tonight?” she asks, bending over and planting her palms on his knees. “Your place?”

She sees the effort it takes him not to flinch away. “Great,” he says. “Tonight.”

###

“You have a surprisingly well-stocked kitchen for someone who never eats food,” Rebecca says, wandering around and opening all the cabinets she passes.

“I eat food,” Nathaniel says.

“Not really,” she comes to a stop by the sink, watching as he cuts tomatoes into slices, all sure hands and nimble fingers. “Ninety percent of all meals I’ve seen you consume were smoothies.”

“Fine, I drink food,” he says, scraping the tomatoes into a large bowl.

“So is that what you’re making for dinner?” Rebecca asks dubiously. “Pureed tomatoes?”

“I wasn’t expecting company,” he says, sparing her an annoyed glance before starting in on some cloves of peeled garlic.

“Wait, I’m right?”

“It’s tomato salad—the tomatoes will remain solid.”

Rebecca _hmm_ s.

“What?”

“Salad,” she says.

“Next time you want a meal you’ll actually like served in my home, you’ll have to give me more than twelve hours of notice.”

“So if I had, you’d be making us mac and cheese right now?”

“Absolutely not.”

She frowns. “Tease.”

“But I would thoughtfully supply the ingredients for you to make it yourself.”

She huffs, acknowledging that.

After a few more moments of observation, the novelty of domesticated Nathaniel starts to wear off. She grins to herself as an idea for how to make it fun again pops into her head.

“So,” she says, trailing off and taking a step toward him.

He doesn’t answer or even look up, obviously waiting for more, so she slides in behind him and wraps her arms around his waist.

“Rebecca,” he says, muscles going stiff even as she feels his breathing come in soft flutters. “I have a knife.”

“Right,” she says. “So you have to concentrate. Don’t pay me any mind at all.”

She can tell he wants to argue but clearly can’t come up with anything because, seconds later, she hears the knife rocking against the cutting board once more.

Still grinning, she runs her cheek up and down his back, and the smooth material of his dress shirt leaves her skin tingling.

The chopping sounds stop again.

“I’m not sure—” His voice cracks a little, so he clears his throat and starts again. “I’m not sure this is how normal couples express physical intimacy.”

“It doesn’t have to be normal,” Rebecca says, squeezing him too tight to emphasize her point. “It just has to be believably intimate.”

He makes a strangled sound in response, and—chasing another whim—she presses her lips firmly into his shoulder.

His lungs expand with a deep, deep breath so that it almost feels like he’s kissing back.

“I’m, um, done,” he says after a moment.

“Hmm?”

“Preparing the meal?” he says, sounding unsure.

“Oh, right.” Rebecca takes a step back. “Sustenance. Dinner. The least important meal of the day. I think. It goes in descending order, right? ‘Cause if not, that’s just unnecessarily confusing.”

Nathaniel raises his eyebrows, and she flushes so hard she wouldn’t be surprised to find the top layer of her skin burned clean off.

“Yeah, you’re right, it doesn’t matter. Let’s eat!”

###

“Now that’s food,” Rebecca says, setting down the carton of pot stickers Nathaniel had ordered for her after she’d groused about the tomato salad enough.

“In a manner of speaking,” he says, and she shoves him in the shoulder.

He grins.

“Look at that,” she says, pointing. “You can react normally when I touch you.”

No sooner than the words are out of her mouth does he clam up.

“Oh, come on.”

“No one to blame but yourself,” he says, rolling his shoulders self-consciously.

Seeing an opportunity, Rebecca scrambles up onto the back of the couch, shuffling until she’s behind Nathaniel.

“You need to relax,” she says, placing her hands on his shoulders and starting to knead.

“Easier said than done,” he says through gritted teeth.

“Aw, do I make you nervous?”

“Yes,” he says, and it comes out like an exasperated yet relieved sigh.

Her thumbs find the base of his neck, and she rubs tight circles into the knots of tension, sliding forward a little to get better leverage. Her thighs lock around his waist and she barely has to move to get her mouth close to his ear.

“Why?”

She feels him shiver a little.

“You’re unpredictable,” he says plainly, and she’s surprised by the honesty of the answer.

“And like you’re mister transparent?” she asks, for once not trying to challenge or tease—not really.

“Can’t be considered gambling if you never play your cards,” he says under his breath, almost like he’s talking to himself.

Rebecca’s hands still. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing,” he says. “It’s nothing.”

“Okay,” she says easily, not wanting to lose the progress she’s made toward slightly more pliable Nathaniel. She resumes her work on his neck, giving his shoulders a squeeze.

The groan that escapes him has both of them catching and holding their breath for a moment.

Emboldened, Rebecca squeezes again, harder this time, and says, “You know, we’re gonna have to do more than just be touchy-feely.”

This close, she thinks she can hear him swallow. “Yeah.”

“So maybe,” she says, letting herself slide sideways. “We should practice that stuff, too.”

“I mean,” he says, seeing her intentions and guiding her into his lap. “If we’re looking to give the most natural performance as possible.”

She settles, her knees now squeezing his hips. His hands find her lower back, but he doesn’t hold her—simply lingers there, torturing her with the suggestion of touch.

“Well, shouldn’t we be?” she asks, only kind of following the thread of their conversation now that their foreheads are pressing against each other and his lips are right there within reach—no bowing necessary.

“Hmm?”

“Natural,” she says, her fingers working their way into the hair at the nape of his neck.

It’s like an off switch. The stiffness in his muscles dissipates, his head lolling back so that his nose skims along hers and presses into her cheek. His hands come to rest on her, pressing her firmly against him. His eyes flutter shut.

“Absolutely,” he whispers, and they’re close enough that she feels his formation of the word on her own lips more than hears it.

At that moment, Rebecca’s phone starts ringing on the coffee table.

Nathaniel’s eyes open and he pulls away. Only a fraction of an inch, but she feels the moment slip away all the same. “Are you going to see who that is?”

She wants to tell him that she doesn’t give a damn. It could be Patti Lupone, and she wouldn’t bat an eye hitting ignore.

But she’s suddenly feeling like maybe there’s something to his comment about gambling, and crawls off his lap.

Her mother’s name is displayed on her phone screen. Speaking of people she’d gladly ignore at the moment…

She tosses Nathaniel an apologetic smile even though he’s not looking at her and steps out into the hallway before picking up.

“Mom, I’m kind of busy at the moment. Can I—”

“Is that any way to greet your mother? Imagine if I’d had that same attitude about delivering you. Not a big deal; I’ll get to it when I get to it. Where would you be then, huh? Probably choked to death by your umbilical cord.”

Rebecca draws in a deep breath through her nose, but she still feels her entire body coiling tight. Her usual response to Naomi-induced fight or flight.

“What do you need, Mom?”

“We need to talk accommodations. My trip is only a few weeks away, but I heard there was a lice outbreak at the local elementary school and…”

###

When she steps back inside, Nathaniel’s in the middle of the room, pacing back and forth.

“Moms,” Rebecca says, noticing that over an hour has passed by. “Am I right?”

He stops to look at her, and her heart immediately sinks.

“What?” she asks. “What’s going on?”

“I need you to leave.”

“Okay, sure,” she says automatically. “Did something happen?”

His eyebrows shoot up his forehead.

“Oh,” she says, feeling her heart tighten where it sits in the pit of her stomach. “Right. That.”

“I just think we’re being a little hasty here,” he says, and she tries to shake the gathering gloom from her head to really focus on what he’s saying. “After all, we’ve laid our cyber trail. I really don’t think any other kind of preparation is necessary.”

“So…”

“So we can just stop,” he says, his voice hard, “spending time with each other outside of work.”

She gapes. And here she’d thought fielding Naomi’s million questions about how she’s been preparing things in West Covina to Naomi’s liking would be the most draining part of her evening. But faced with the sharpness in Nathaniel’s eyes and the resolved set of his mouth, Rebecca feels like maybe the color is being leached out of the world around her.

“Is this because…” Her voice is faint, so she swallows and tries again. “We were just messing around.”

Her choice of words seems to send him further out of her reach and into the muted gray encroaching on her.

“Right,” he says. “Messing.”

When he doesn’t elucidate, Rebecca feels her brow furrow.

“You told me to tell you when I’d had enough,” he finally continues, watching her face.

She feels frustrated, stressed tears spring to her eyes when that sinks in. “I’m sorry, I—”

“I’ll still hold up my end of the contract, of course,” he continues as if she hadn’t spoken. “Whenever your mom gets into town, we’ll reconvene.”

“Sure,” she says. “That’s fair.”

“Great,” Nathaniel says, and takes a step toward her.

For a second, she thinks he’s reaching for her, and she feels her heart buoy. But then he grabs hold of the door handle and swings it open: a clear invitation for her to leave.

“Um, thanks for dinner,” she hears herself saying, overly formal.

Something flickers across his face, and she imagines that maybe he’ll tell her this was all a joke. That’d tie them, after all.

All he offers her, though, is a polite smile and a, “See you tomorrow.”

As she stumbles numbly down the hall to the elevator, her heart crashes all over again.

She’d never been in charge of her own feelings, she realizes with a certainty that somehow catches her off guard and strikes her as something she’d known this whole time all at once.

Not even a little.


	5. Chapter 5

Once the door falls shut behind Rebecca, Nathaniel takes a moment, leaning his forehead against it and pinching the bridge of his nose.

He’s not going to think about her, though. Not about her warm, wandering hands. Not about how she fits in his lap, a grounding weight he didn’t think he’d find so reassuring. And certainly not about how, when she isn’t launching herself at him like a missile, he has the time to appreciate how her every intention can be lifted from her expressive eyes before she’s about to lean in for a kiss.

With a sigh and a squeeze of his fingers, he pushes off the door.

Right. Enough of that.

He goes into the kitchen, opening the windows for background noise as he finishes wiping down the counters and loading the dishwasher. After stuffing the takeout containers in the trash, he removes the bag and leans it against the bin so he can pull on some shoes and pocket his car keys.

Once the trash is in the dumpster, he walks to his car, retrieving the boxes of files he’d found in his office that morning.

He forgot to ask Darryl if he’d been working on Saturday, if he’d been the one to sign for the delivery, and resolves to look into it in the morning.

For now, he lugs the boxes up to his apartment, setting them on the ground by the coffee table before moving back into the kitchen to replace the trash bag, wash his hands, and latch the window closed.

Glass of water in hand, he walks back to his living room. Before sitting, he tugs the coffee table over to the wall and then unstacks the boxes so he can start going through the copies of the Plimpton, Plimpton & Plimpton financial records he’d requested on a whim the last time he’d been in the office.

They’re organized by year, but he needs them sorted out by acquisition. He’d barely put a dent in the job before he’d been distracted that morning.

But that’s not going to be a problem anymore, now is it?

He doesn’t allow himself to dwell on the pang of regret. There’s work to do, and if there’s a pattern here, Nathaniel’s going to find it. Only a matter of time.

###

“Oh.” Nathaniel stops in the doorway to his office when, upon returning from a bathroom break, he finds Rebecca seated on the couch. “Hello.”

She inclines her head, not even looking up from her book. It’s a new one, he notices.

For a moment, he considers asking her how she’d liked the other one, but whether because of her chilly demeanor or the fact that showing too much interest will undermine his attempt at keeping his distance, he decides against it, shaking his head at himself and walking around his desk.

He tries to resume skimming the Daily Covina’s business section for any interesting articles like he doesn’t care at all that she’s there, but it’s not his fault that Rebecca’s presence is so _loud_. The air around him vibrates with the sound waves she creates simply by sitting in the room.

His eyes flit from his computer screen up to her face. Of course she looks totally composed and unbothered. There’s even a hint of a smile on her face—apparently the new book is enjoyable—as she flips the page with one hand and unwraps a sandwich from the vending machine with the other.

_Right_ , he thinks to himself, _lunch_.

As soon as he realizes that’s why she’s in here, he notices the lack of smoothie.

It’s not surprising—he knows he shouldn’t expect favors from her after his outburst last night—but the deviation from routine still stings.

The wrench he feels in his sternum upon realizing they’d gotten into a routine stings worse, though, and that’s all the motivation his resolve needs.

He clears his throat. “So.”

“You said outside of work,” she says, pouncing on the opening. Her voice is sharp, meant to sting like a slap.

It’s a complete one-eighty from the night before, but he’s not going to think about the tears he’d thought he’d seen in her eyes as he asked her to leave. He’s _not_. Because, strangely enough, there’s comfort in this Rebecca. As long as she’s brimming over with anger and indignation, he needs to be the cool and in-control boss. He’s had so much rehearsal in this role—particularly over the past tumultuous year—he can play it in his sleep.

“That I did.”

“Great. So as per section two, article three of our _legally binding_ contract, you owe me any and all time necessary to keep up appearances. You are planning on holding up your end of the legally binding contract, aren’t you?”

He wants to roll his eyes, but doesn’t. “I said that I would, didn’t I?”

They stare hard at each other until Rebecca flicks her hair haughtily over her shoulder and returns her eyes to her book.

“You’d better.”

“I will,” he says, unable to help the irritated edge that creeps into his voice. Cool and in control. That’s him.

“And you’d better be convincing,” Rebecca says. “Because, so help me, if you screw this up—”

“I won’t,” he snaps, needing her not to mention rehearsing. Even though he’s absolutely not thinking about last night. “This is all in the name of having you owe me, after all.”

“Of course. Can’t miss out on a chance to exploit your employees, right?”

He narrows his eyes at her. “If it helps keep the unruly ones in line, sure.”

“You are such an asshole!”

“Quiet now,” he says, turning his attention back to his laptop. “You’re not being very _convincing_ , are you?”

He can practically taste her frustration, but instead of slinging a comment back at him, she remains silent.

After a moment, he lets the breath he’d been holding go in a huff and clicks on an article at random.

He doesn’t read it, though.

In fact, his focus seems to have evaporated entirely, and he spends the hour until she silently gathers her things and leaves bitterly reviewing all the important things she’s keeping him from getting done.

###

Unfortunately, Nathaniel’s focus problems remain even after Rebecca’s gone. He spends most of the afternoon writing and rewriting three paragraphs of a brief he should have finished in an hour.

“Hey, there, co-captain,” Darryl says, strolling into his office in the late afternoon. “Jim had a birthday over the weekend and we’re about to cut cake and sing. You in?”

Nathaniel growls and slams his laptop shut. “Why do people insist on making work personal? It’s not. It’s _work_!”

“So that’s a no on cake?” Darryl asks.

Nathaniel sighs. “Will you make sure they don’t sink an hour into this transparent excuse not to do their jobs?”

“Keep the cake break to forty minutes, tops,” Darryl says with a playful smile. “Got it.”

“Fine,” Nathaniel says, standing. “I’ll attend.”

“Oh, I’m just kidding,” Darryl says, and then takes a closer look at Nathaniel. “Is everything okay with you?”

“I’m fine,” Nathaniel says, too sharp and too quick.

Darryl raises his eyebrows and, with a heavy exhale, Nathaniel falls back into his chair.

“I suppose the stress of managing some…” He trails off with a little cough. “…side projects has me on edge.” Not even a lie.

Darryl frowns sympathetically. “Well, what are you doing to decompress?”

Nathaniel grits his teeth.

Taking that as an answer, Darryl continues, “You want to hit the gym with me after work? I’m allowed to bring a guest once a month, and lucky for you, I haven’t taken anyone this month yet. Or technically ever. I mean, I’ve tried to get people to go with me, but you know how Rebecca and Paula are. And Maya’s idea of a workout is dancing along to other people’s songs on karaoke night, so she never—”

“I’ll come,” Nathaniel says, surprising both of them.

“You will?”

Nathaniel frowns at himself, but nods. “Yes.”

“That’s great! I’ll meet you in the lobby at five?”

Nathaniel glances down at his watch. “Fine.”

Before he can change his mind, Darryl bounces out of the room.

###

“…And that’s when Karen’s sleeve caught fire,” Darryl says, barely pausing in his recount of Jim’s in-office birthday celebration to take a breath, let alone to actually touch the free weights. “Thankfully Rebecca’s a quick thinker. She used Tim’s cardigan to snuff out the flame. Isn’t she resourceful?”

Saving Nathaniel the trouble of figuring out whether the question’s addressed to him or not, Josh says with mock appreciation, “Very experienced at extinguishing fires.”

“Aw, come on now,” Darryl says with just a hint of rebuke.

Something significant passes between them, sending prickles along the back of Nathaniel’s neck. Before he can react, though—whip his head up or ask what Josh means—he reminds himself that it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t care.

He repeats it to himself as he pumps the weight.

_I don’t care. I don’t care._

“Whoa, there,” Josh says, pushing off the mirror. “Your form is impeccable, dude, but you gotta make sure you’re intentional with every move. Savor the progress. That, and don’t tear a rotator cuff or pull something. There’s never been an injury on my watch.”

Nathaniel grunts in acknowledgement, takes a deep breath, and wills himself to slow down. But when his eyes drift away from his own form in the mirror to the adoring look Darryl’s giving Josh, he falters completely.

“So what’s that been like, anyway?” Josh asks, eyes still on Nathaniel.

“Hmm?”

“Dating Rebecca.”

Nathaniel stalls, switching the weight over to his other hand, and schools his features into a look he hopes remains neutral. “Fine.”

“Oh, come on,” Josh says. “There’s gotta be more to say than that.”

“There’s really not,” Nathaniel says, breathing deep.

“I bet every day is like a new form of whiplash.”

“Joshua!” Darryl says, openly reprimanding now.

“What?” Josh shrugs. “Girl is a mess. Even _you_ have to see that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Darryl,” Josh says, affecting his Voice of Reason tone. “When she set herself on fire in Josh’s front yard, your only comment was that those two had a lot to work through. It’s sweet that you love your friend that much, but dude. You make far too many allowances for Rebecca.”

The weight slips out of Nathaniel’s hand and hits the ground with a _crack_ that echoes all through the gym.

Flustered heat works its way up his neck and into his cheeks as he stoops to pick it up.

Josh eyes him. “Hadn’t heard about that, huh?”

Nathaniel’s eyes jump between Darryl and his boyfriend as he scrambles desperately for something to say.

His brain is a little stuck, though.

“They’re not at the talking-about-exes stage yet,” Darryl says, jumping to his aid.

“Yeah, that’s probably a doozy of a conversation to have. You know, she also dated my friend Greg. The day we found out he was an alcoholic, there was also this big scare that Rebecca’s choice in sexual partners was gonna drive him to drink again. It was actually a pretty wild night. Hector and I—”

“Hey,” Darryl says, his voice gentle but the warning clear. “Maybe we should find something else to talk about.”

“When?” Nathaniel asks, his thoughts finally catching up to him.

“That night?” Josh starts to answer. “It was—”

“No,” Nathaniel cuts him off. “The…the fire.”

“It would have been when Josh left the seminary and moved back home, so.” Josh pauses, thinking.

Nathaniel can feel Darryl’s eyes on him, but he can’t return the look. He doesn’t want to see whatever mix of concern and disapproval that’s undoubtedly too easy to read in his features.

“That’d have been like four months ago now.”

Nathaniel feels his head jerk back in surprise.

“Ah,” he says after a tense moment. “I see.”

“You guys weren’t…?” Josh can’t seem to stop himself from asking.

“No, not yet,” Nathaniel says numbly. Then, after another tense beat, he walks over to the rack of weights, sets his down, and heads for the locker room.

He doesn’t notice Darryl following him until he’s already inside.

“It wasn’t a big deal really. Basically just a prank that got out of hand.”

Nathaniel doesn’t say anything.

“Do you want…are you going to go talk to her?” He sounds almost hopeful, and Nathaniel feels the ghost of an urge to laugh. He swallows hard.

But he’s still touched enough by Darryl’s concern to offer a noncommittal “Not immediately.”

“Space can be good.”

Nathaniel grabs his bag from the locker and nods at Darryl. “Sure can.”

###

The news articles aren’t hard to find.

In fact, they’re so easily accessed, Nathaniel feels shame crowding his throat as he reads, unsure how he managed to go without catching a whiff of the story around the time it happened.

It’s a small comfort that most of the articles are blurbs in the police blotter sections of local newspapers—which he rarely reads—and one slightly more in-depth and gossipy post on the Daily Covina’s companion blog—which he’s never read before, and never will again with any luck.

Even so, it feels like a personal failing: that he didn’t know, that no one bothered to tell him.

Off that thought, Nathaniel starts to wonder who, exactly, kept the information from him. Darryl, apparently. Paula, surely.

What about his father? Does he know?

The realization that the answer could easily be _yes_ sends an icy chill of mortification sliding into the pit of his stomach.

Having exhausted his googling skills, he goes back to the first article he’d come across and reads it again. And then the second and the third.

Even with another pass, they pose more questions than they answer.

###

Rebecca slams the door to his office closed behind her when she stops by for lunch the next day.

Nathaniel looks up from his work and watches as she settles on the couch, never sparing a glance or a greeting.

He’s not sure why he expected her to look different in some way, and he’s not sure what the lurching of his heart means when he realizes she doesn’t.

Wetting his lips, he forces his eyes back down to his desk.

Moments later, though, they climb their way back up to look at her of their own accord.

“Stop it,” Rebecca snaps after a moment.

“Stop being distracting,” Nathaniel says, the petulant response sliding from his mouth in the panic of being caught.

“I’m literally not doing anything.”

He nods to the bag of chips in her lap.

“Oh, fuck off,” she says, lowering her voice as her temper rises. “Not all of us want to starve ourselves for lunch.”

_Not all of us continue to obsess over our ex after they leave us in the most definitive way possible._

The words almost burst out of him, but he bites his tongue—literally locking it between his teeth—and ducks his head.

“Sure, yeah, I’d hate to distract the great Nathaniel Plimpton the Third from his very important work. That’d be a travesty of international proportions.”

“Just leave it alone, Rebecca,” he says under his breath, throat thick.

“No.”

The response is so _her_ , he wants to laugh.

And suddenly he’s back on the same precipice he’d felt racing up from the pit of his stomach into his throat when she’d wrapped her arms around him in his kitchen…when she’d slid into his lap intent on kissing him.

“Fine,” he says, managing to sound in control and terse instead of like he’s spiraling completely.

“Good.”

He sighs, relieved when she goes back to pointedly ignoring him.

Seconds later, she crinkles her chip bag far more than necessary while fishing inside.

###

“Hey, dude, fancy meeting you here.”

Nathaniel spins around to find Heather leaning in his office doorway, crop top and frayed jean shorts looking out of place among all the sterile white and fluorescent lighting.

Unexpectedly, a grin starts to form at the sight of her. He quickly banishes it, though, clearing his throat as he moves away from the window.

“What are you doing here?”

“Uh-uh.” She shakes her head at him. “I saw that. You’re totally glad to see me.”

He smooths his tie once he’s settled in his chair. “Even if that were the case, I’d still want to know how you got in.”

She shrugs. “Happened to be walking up as someone was leaving. They held the door for me.”

Nathaniel frowns. “Is our security really that lax?”

“Guess so.”

“Unsettling.”

“Like anyone would bother robbing this place. Unless they need, like, a thousand manila folders in a jiffy or whatever.”

The grin comes back. Heather does him the courtesy of pretending not to notice, taking a couple steps into the office and cocking her head at the painting hanging above the couch.

“Seriously, what are you doing here?” he asks after a moment.

“You haven’t been around for a minute.”

He shifts in his seat. “Yeah, I—”

“Oh, I didn’t come for an explanation,” Heather says. “I already know what happened.”

“You do?”

“I mean, not the specifics.” She turns her back on the painting to raise her eyebrows at him. “But I can guess.”

He rolls his hand at her in a ‘go on then, let’s hear it’ gesture.

“The long version,” Heather says with a put-upon sigh, crossing her arms over her chest, “is that things got too real, so you freaked out. But because you can’t admit that’s why you’re freaking out, you had to go back to being cold and arrogant. And Rebecca, because she can’t admit why it hurt that you freaked out, is sulking like a child. Thanks for that, by the way.”

“How is that—” He starts to protest, but she cuts him off.

“The short version is that the two of you are playing a game of idiot chicken.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She stares at him, unwavering and serious. “Your game of idiot chicken is with _Rebecca_ ,” she reminds him. “I don’t want to play.”

There’s no use pretending he doesn’t know what she means, so he simply rolls his eyes, picks up his pen, and turns his attention to the files spread out on his desk. “You couldn’t be more wrong.”

“You’re worse than her, you know. Denial’s a bad look for you, dude. Makes you get all puckered up, like you just licked a lemon.”

He looks back up at her, wincing with distaste.

“Yeah,” she says, pointing at his face, “like that.”

“Did you come here just to annoy me?”

“Why would I make a special trip for that?” she asks. “You’re, like, super easy to rankle, so. I don’t need to go out of my way just to see that happen.”

“I am not,” he says, affronted.

“You’re rankled right now.”

He taps the pen against his open palm. “Stop saying the word rankled. Who uses words like that conversationally?”

“See? You’re even rankled by my colorful vocabulary.”

He closes his eyes and draws a deep breath in through his nose.

“Alright, don’t have a cow,” Heather says, and he can hear the grin in her voice. “I actually came to give you this.”

He opens his eyes to find her holding out a plain white envelope across the desk. Curious, he sets the pen aside to grab it and his letter opener.

There’s a small square of pale purple cardstock inside.

“Did you make this?” he asks, amused.

“Valencia. She wouldn’t let me use the university-sanctioned invites because I’m too special for that or something.”

She manages to sound convincingly offhand, but Nathaniel still notices the note of pleasure in her voice. He _hmm_ s.

“Shut up,” she says, shaking her head.

“Like you shut up about my business with Rebecca?”

Heather tips her head, granting him a win.

He licks his grinning lips, and nods down at the card. “So you’re graduating.”

“Hence the invitation to my graduation ceremony.”

“If you actually wanted me to come, you wouldn’t have addressed it to Stick,” he says, flashing the fancy calligraphy at her accusatorily.

“Or maybe that means I want you to come extra.”

“That can’t be it. You don’t even like me; you’re putting up with me for Rebecca’s sake.”

She pretends to think about it. “Seems like you don’t have enough information to draw conclusions.”

Again, he finds himself charmed despite himself and smiles. Strangely enough, it feels like a small victory when she smiles back.

Before it can get too familiar, he clears his throat and asks, “What’s your degree in anyway?”

“Sociology, I guess.”

“Sounds…impractical.”

She crosses her eyes at him, but then sighs. “Yeah, well, I don’t want to graduate at all. But I can’t renew my scholarship another year, and even though the classes are pretty cheap, they’re not, like, sustainable-on-a-bartender’s-income cheap, so.”

“Well then, congratulations,” he says, mock cheerful.

She snorts. “Yeah.”

He holds up the card again. “I’ll be there.”

“Cool.”

The one-word answer could easily be dismissive, but Heather manages to sound genuinely excited.

Which is perhaps what compels him to add, “And even though you absolutely could have mailed this, I’m glad you stopped by. I…” He pauses, clearing his throat. “Well, you know.”

“No, I definitely need to hear you say it.”

He rolls his eyes toward the ceiling, but forces out a quiet, “I missed seeing you around.”

“That wasn’t hard, now was it?”

“Excruciating.”

“Just like the pain of being kept away from me.”

“Get out of my office,” he says with a reluctant laugh.

“Fine, fine,” Heather says. “But only because Naomi arrives in a couple days, and we’ll be seeing plenty of each other. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to stand it.”

Nathaniel’s eyes drop to his watch, confirming the date. “Huh.”

Heather shakes her head at his sudden shift in attitude and mumbles something under her breath, moving for the door. She pauses before leaving. “Don’t work yourself too hard, Stick. I suspect your snapping point is closer than we think.”

He grabs the first thing within reach—a binder clip—and throws it halfheartedly at her as she retreats.

###

A general feeling of unproductiveness falls over the office late Friday morning—the very Friday Naomi’s expected to arrive—but Nathaniel’s not driven from his office until he hears a swell of idle conversation.

“I don’t pay you to sit around and shoot the breeze, people!”

The result is immediate: everyone scatters, scampering back to their desks while determinedly avoiding eye contact with him.

“Well, I do appreciate a man who knows how to command a room.”

Nathaniel’s seen Naomi Bunch before, of course, but there’s something very different about being the center of her attention. In fact—and the thought unnerves him—it’s almost like being pinned under Rebecca’s stare. There’s a similar kind of intensity.

Before he’s recovered his bearings at being so suddenly under her mom’s scrutiny, Rebecca’s at his side and snaking her arm through his. It’s the first time they’ve touched since their dress rehearsal and his heart leaps up into his throat. He clears it, tamping down the swell of emotion.

“Mom, this is Nathaniel.”

He nods at Naomi. “Nice to see you again, ma’am.”

“Right, we’ve met before,” Naomi says, taking full stock of him before turning her eyes on Rebecca. “At my daughter’s public meltdown masked as a wedding.”

Nathaniel feels his eyebrows climb his forehead, and he looks down at Rebecca. She’s gritting her teeth in an approximation of a smile, and a match of sympathy strikes to life in the center of his chest. A beat later, he remembers there’s no reason to feel bad for her where Josh Chan is concerned and that snuffs out the flame as quickly as it’d been ignited.

“Yes, well…” He trails off, unsure how to respond. Thankfully, his watch buzzes at that moment with a reminder. “I actually have a video conference to prepare for, so you’ll have to excuse me for the time being.”

“Oh? So work does actually get done around here?” Naomi asks.

“Only on my lucky days,” he says, trying to project charm over the sting of the insult.

Naomi grins a tight little grin, playing amused.

Rebecca grinds the thick heel of her shoe into the top of his foot, then, and he barely keeps from yelping in pain. He does incline his head toward her in question, though.

Her eyes bore into him meaningfully, as if she’s trying to project a warning from her mind directly into his: _be convincing, dumbass_.

“How about we reconvene for lunch, though—in about an hour?” he adds. “My treat.”

“That sounds nice, right, Mom?”

Naomi shrugs, her eyes jumping between Rebecca and Nathaniel. “Eh.”

“Great,” he says. “In the meantime, why don’t you have Rebecca give you a tour of the place?”

Naomi looks around, clearly unimpressed. “Is this not it?”

He keeps the polite smile fixed on his face as he says, “Have fun.” Then, intent on spiting Rebecca with a stellar performance, he bends down to give her a peck on the top of her head, whispering, “Good luck,” into her hair.

As he walks back to his office, he feels the full unnerving weight of both Bunch women’s eyes tracking him.

###

“So,” Nathaniel says as he holds open the door to his car for Naomi. “How was your trip?”

“A misery,” she says, sliding into the backseat after giving him a look that falls a few yards shy of approving. “Airlines don’t hold their flight attendants to the same standards anymore.”

“The service was bad?” he asks, aiming for polite disinterest as he gets into the driver’s side and buckles his seatbelt. Either he misses or Naomi simply doesn’t care because she launches into a monologue about the horrors of her flight.

Of course, since Rebecca’s hand lands on his thigh somewhere between her mother’s condemnation of the food and her diatribe on what counts as ergonomic seating, he finds himself grateful for Naomi’s dulled sense of social decorum. It’s a welcome distraction.

Though he tries to stop himself, Nathaniel’s eyes wander over to look at Rebecca while they’re stopped at a light. She’s staring out the window, looking bored out of her mind.

He turns his attention back to the road, nostrils flared.

“And of course then I had to get a rental car and drive myself from the airport.”

“Why’s that?” he asks, heart lurching alongside Rebecca’s flexing fingers.

“Oh, you know this one,” Naomi says.

“My mom has no faith in my driving ability,” Rebecca says in a gratingly cheery voice, turning to smile her gritted-teeth smile at him.

He thinks maybe she wants him to laugh, but his mind jumps to the fire and the license suspension, and suddenly he feels too sick to be driving. Thankfully, they’ve arrived at the restaurant Rebecca chose for lunch. He pulls jerkily into the parking lot.

Apparently on the same track, Naomi says, “Faith? Who could have faith when you made a public spectacle of yourself, lighting that fire and then trying to escape when that poor family called the police? They should have taken your license away, if you ask me. It’s not enough to just suspend it. You’ll be back on the roads terrorizing the community before you’ve learned a thing.”

The beat of silence after Naomi’s done saying her piece contains such tension, the hair at the back of his neck pricks up.

It doesn’t help that Rebecca’s watching him. He feels her apprehensive eyes on his face.

“Oh, did you not know about that?” Naomi asks like she knows perfectly well the answer is no.

He puts the car in park and turns to look Rebecca in the eye when he says, “I did.”

Naomi _tsk_ s. “And yet you’re willing to date her, knowing how she might embarrass you?”

Though they’re already huge, Rebecca’s eyes widen even more. A beat later, she turns away from him, looking into the backseat. “Mom, can you not say things like that about me to other people? Particularly people I’m romantically involved with?”

“What’s wrong with what I said?” Naomi asks, sounding convincingly wounded. “He ought to know what you’re like. Otherwise you’re doomed to a life of people leaving you at the altar.”

“I don’t see what—” Rebecca starts to say.

“It’s in the past, and Rebecca’s okay,” Nathaniel says, trying to sound definitive in his belated answering of Naomi’s question. Because, really, there’s nothing he’d rather be talking about less than the things Rebecca’s done for Josh Chan, especially when he has to concentrate on pretending to be in love with her. “That’s what matters most to me.”

Rebecca’s eyes find his once more.

The average person is hard to read because they’ve perfected their poker face, can throw up impenetrable barriers at will. But Nathaniel’s never known Rebecca to be average. In that moment, too many too intense emotions flicker in her expression, and he can’t grab onto any of them.

“Self-destruction is never okay,” Naomi says, and then opens the car door and slides out.

They both flinch when she slams it shut.

“Nathaniel, I—”

“This is going well,” he says with a tight smile, cutting her off. Then he gets out of the car, too.

###

When the chunky heel of Rebecca’s sandal connects with Nathaniel’s shin for the third time since they were seated a minute ago, he looks up from his menu and scowls at her.

She doesn’t hesitate in making a funny face in response, crossing her eyes before inclining her head toward the silent Naomi.

He shrugs.

She kicks him again.

Nathaniel clears his throat. “So—”

Naomi cuts him off. “I’m going to stop you right there.”

“Oh-kay.”

She sets her menu on the table. “I know what you two are doing.”

Given the spike of panic those words drive into his gut, it’s a miracle he doesn’t whirl around and give Rebecca a look that’d be as good as an admission of guilt.

“And what’s that?” he asks, his voice even.

“You want my approval of this, frankly, ill-conceived relationship.”

“Mom—” Rebecca starts to say, and Nathaniel can hear the sigh of relief in her voice even though he’s still not allowing himself to look at her.

He’s still watching Naomi, whose raised finger is enough to silence Rebecca. “What did you think would happen? Hmm? That I’d get my hopes up that you’ll finally settle down into a normal life and stop causing me all this grief? That I’d let myself bond with another one of your flights of fancy?”

Nathaniel feels himself wince at the description, his eyes falling to the table and then cutting to Rebecca.

She’s floundering, jaw working but no words coming out. Finally, she spits out, “I just thought you’d want to be a part of what’s going on with my life.”

Naomi ignores her, eyes landing once again on Nathaniel.

“I don’t know why you’re with my daughter, but I suspect you’re getting something more than the pleasure,” she says the word with no small amount of wry humor, “of her company.”

“Mom!” Rebecca screeches the word, attracting the attention of several surrounding tables. When she speaks again, it’s a low hiss. “That is offensive on, like, so many levels, and I’m not comfortable with the implication that I’d—”

“—Oh, so you _would_ like to discuss what you would and wouldn’t do to—”

“I happen to enjoy the pleasure of your daughter’s company quite a bit,” Nathaniel says, raising his voice to be heard over the both of them.

“Nathaniel, you don’t have to explain yourself,” Rebecca says.

“No, it’s important,” he says, covering the hand resting on the table with his own without looking. His eyes are still on Naomi.

She flicks her hair over her shoulder with a toss of her head and crosses her arms: a very clear challenge.

“Having me meet you was important to Rebecca, so I agreed,” he says, happy to find a version of the truth falling from his lips easily and with conviction. “Since we’re being frank with each other, though, I feel it’s only fair to tell you I don’t give a damn if you approve of our relationship.”

Naomi huffs, clearly about to rebuff, but he soldiers on.

“I will, however, thank you for your honesty, because it means that this lunch just became a waste of my time, and I hate wasting time. So,” he pulls his wallet out of his pocket and slides out a credit card, “you ladies enjoy lunch and an Uber on me. I will excuse myself back to the office. Rebecca.” He turns to her, and a single bark of laughter bubbles up to his lips at how bewildered she looks. Swallowing it back down, he says, “I’ll see you there in about an hour.”

“Yeah,” she says, voice faint, “okay.”

He leans over the arm of his chair, only realizing at the last second what he’s doing.

Rebecca’s also caught off guard, her wide eyes blinking rapidly at him. That sends a jolt of bashfulness through him, and he course corrects ever-so-slightly, catching the corner of her lips. Red rushes into her cheeks as he pulls away.

He hopes it looks like a convincing enough goodbye for Naomi, at least.

“Okay, well, I should be going now,” he says and pushes up out of the chair.

Clear of the table, he finds himself full of a buoyant feeling he doesn’t quite understand. Trying to hang onto it, he whistles on his way to the car.

###

“Maya!” Nathaniel says sharply, marching through the center of the bullpen toward Darryl’s office. “Follow me.”

When he passes Rebecca’s cubicle, she looks up and quirks a judgmental eyebrow at him. He resists the urge to stick out his tongue at her, instead simply breaking eye contact by jerking his chin up.

“What can I do for you, co-captain?” Darryl asks when Nathaniel stomps into the room. “Are you here to talk about how you reunited with Rebecca?”

“What? No.”

“But I saw you two go to lunch with her mom today,” he continues as Maya slinks past Nathaniel into the room and goes to cower by the window. “That’s a big step, right?”

“Darryl, please,” Nathaniel says, holding up his hand. “I’m here to talk to you and Maya about—”

“Oh no,” Darryl interjects, sharing a panicked look with Maya. “Again?”

“—the crying,” he confirms. “Again.”

Maya pouts. “Connie, that traitor.”

Nathaniel pinches the bridge of his nose. “I don’t understand what possesses you to start talking about your personal affairs in the first place, when all you have to do is transfer the call.”

“Well, for me, personally—” Darryl starts to say.

“And I don’t care,” Nathaniel cuts him off. “Stop crying in front of judges, stop crying in front of opposing counsel, stop crying in front of potential clients. Just _stop crying_! This is not a big ask, and yet we have this meeting every week.”

“What if my dog dies and I get really emotional?” Maya asks.

Nathaniel curls his hand into a fist. He’s still trying to formulate a response when Rebecca pops up next to him in the doorway.

“Hey, guys. Talking about Waterworksgate again?”

Nathaniel grits his teeth. “Yes, so if you could—”

“You know, you’ve had this conversation about a hundred times,” she says, resting her chin against his forearm and slowly sliding both arms around him, her palms gliding along his stomach and lower back. “And _I_ really need to have a meeting with you.”

“I knew it!” Darryl says, pointing. “You guys are in a good place again. Just look at you.”

“Rebecca,” Nathaniel says with a threat in his voice. At least he hopes there is. He can’t hear himself over the drumming of his heartbeat. “Now is not a good time.”

“I think it’s the perfect time,” she says, moving her one hand to his belt buckle. He catches her wrist and then jumps as her other hand slides into his back pocket.

“Oh-em-gee,” Maya says, her nervous fluttering intercut with that other kind of fluttering she does. “Look at how soft he gets just being near her. He’s putty in her hands.”

“I know,” Darryl says gleefully.

“Okay,” Nathaniel says, spinning to face Rebecca. He grabs her shoulders, twists her around, and starts pushing her out the door. “You want to meet? Let’s meet.”

She doesn’t put up any resistance but does half-turn back into the office to throw a wink at Darryl.

His and Maya’s giggles follow them to the elevator. Nathaniel stabs at the button and, miraculously, the doors slide open right away.

“What the hell was that?” He snaps as soon as the door’s closed and they’re moving.

“I needed to return your credit card. By the way, what the hell was lunch?” she asks, immediately shedding playfully horny to reveal heated fury.

Surprise pulls the rug out from under his indignation, and he’s left a little winded. “What do you mean what the hell was lunch? I nailed lunch!”

“Are you kidding me? The plan was to make my mom mad that she liked you so much, not to insult her and _leave_!”

The elevator doors open on the first floor so, with an effort, he swallows back his retort and storms toward the entrance to the building. He can feel her on his heels, following him as he walks on in blind frustration. Eventually, he comes to a stop on the side of the building with the small cluster of umbrella-topped picnic tables.

Thankfully, it’s well past lunchtime and the area is totally abandoned for the afternoon.

“Let me get this straight,” he says, turning suddenly. “You didn’t care for my performance at lunch, but instead of telling me that privately, you feel me up in front of the other employees?”

“Confusing, isn’t it?” she says, taking an accusatory step into his personal space. “Someone oscillating between indifference and being totally sweet to you.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, narrowing his eyes and towering over her. “Are you implying that it was sweet of you to feel me up in front of my employees?”

“You never said anything!” she shouts in his face. “Never sent a card, never asked if I was okay!”

He laughs, a hard sound that falls from his chest with a _thunk_. “You wanted me to send a condolence card after you set yourself on fire?”

“So it _was_ a load of crap: you thinking that me being okay is the most important thing.” She jabs a finger into his chest. He pushes himself into the force of it and the tip of his nose nearly brushes hers. “I knew it!”

“Because you think I’m just a thoughtless asshole, right? That’s why you chose me for this job—because I live my life transaction to transaction, seeing how much I can take a person for granted.”

“I sure do, though fat lot of good it did me today!”

“Your mom sure would be proud,” he says with a jeer, his eyes falling to her lips.

“Fuck off.”

He watches as she bites off the _f_ in off.

“You fuck off! I didn’t know anything about the fire until a week ago, and if I had, I would have—” He breaks himself off, not liking any of the ends to that sentence sitting within his reach.

“Would have what?” Rebecca demands.

He blinks, and then he’s grabbing her face in his hands and hauling her mouth up toward his and she’s creating tight fists around the front of his shirt and kissing him back like she’s trying to crawl all the way inside him. And he feels her succeed, feels her taking root in his sinuses and diving into the warm pool in the pit of his stomach and punching out boulders in his chest to make room.

He pushes her off just as quickly as he’d grabbed her and takes several stumbling steps back. She blinks at him, lips smudged and chest heaving.

“I have to, um…”

He turns and starts jogging back toward the front of the building.

“Yeah, well, you still have to fix things with Naomi,” Rebecca yells after him, and he cannot think about why her voice sounds serrated and hoarse.

He cannot think.

###

Nathaniel shifts his car into park and cuts the engine, sitting and staring at Rebecca’s house. No sooner than the quiet presses in around him do the sense memories of yesterday’s kiss start bombarding him.

Clumsy as his sweaty fingers and shaking hands are, it takes him a full minute to type out a text to Heather: _Come outside, please._

_Come outside where?_ Heather responds a moment later.

He rolls his eyes and jabs out the message: _Your house_.

Heather: _Um?_

Nathaniel: _Curb_.

Another minute passes before Heather’s knocking on his window. He jumps, looking up from his phone.

“You’re a very curt texter,” she says when he rolls it down.

“Get inside,” he says, nodding toward the passenger seat.

“You’re a very curt person.”

Nathaniel sighs. “Get inside, _please_.”

“Now was that so hard?” she asks, making a face at him before crossing around the front of the car. She studies him closely after closing the door behind her. “You’re not gonna, like, murder me, are you?”

“Yes,” he says. “Now aren’t you disappointed in yourself for being so easy to lure in here?”

“I’ve been studying the bow,” she says after a moment of consideration. “I’d take you down, Plimpton.”

He grunts.

“What?”

“Nothing. You’re just awfully cocky for a person who probably weighs a hundred pounds soaking wet.”

“Woah, dude, suuuuper inappropriate,” she says. “Not to mention, knowing not to comment on other people’s weight is, like, human one-oh-one.”

“Must have missed that class.”

“Color me not surprised.”

“Can we move on to the reason I needed you in the first place?”

“No.”

He pulls a face at her.

“Not until you apologize,” she explains.

Nathaniel heaves out a sigh. “I’m sorry for being inappropriate.”

“I’m docking points for attitude but, fine, please continue.”

“I kissed Rebecca yesterday,” he says, the words bursting out of him.

“Uh-huh.”

“No,” he says, drawing in a shaky breath. “It wasn’t for…it was a private moment.”

“Oh.”

“That’s all you’ve got to say?” he asks, hating the desperate edge in his voice.

“I’m processing.”

“Because it’s weird, right?”

She shoots him a pitying look. “I mean, not really.”

“Why not?” he asks, desperation mounting.

“Because of your thing for her.”

He laughs, a breathy and unconvincing sound. “That’s not—I don’t—”

“We’ve had conversations about it,” she reminds him.

“Have we though?”

“Fine, we’ve crafted beautiful yet painfully obvious metaphors through which we could have subtextual conversations about it.”

“I feel like you’re mocking me,” he says, his breathing ragged.

“I am.” She watches him. “Dude, what is happening to you right now?”

“I don’t know, but I need you to keep talking.”

“Well, what do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you looking for encouragement?”

Nathaniel grits his teeth. “I don’t _know_.”

“Commiseration?”

“ _I don’t know!_ ”

“A list of reasons why it’s a bad idea to get involved with her?”

The wail almost slides out of him a fourth time, but he lets out a squeaky exhale instead and says. “Yeah. Do that one.”

“Okay, well, first of all, the fact that you’re her boss makes things weird for sure.”

“Well, the paperwork has been filed, so that’s not really an issue.”

“Sure, that helps,” she says, “but I think there’re still some power structures at play worth keeping in mind.”

“Yeah, fine,” he says, focusing more on evening out his breaths than the words coming from his mouth. “What else you got?”

Heather shakes her head, but says, “The fact that you’ve got this weird little arrangement complicates things. Like, how can you be completely sure feelings are authentic when you’ve created this complex web of lies around them?”

“Right,” he says, pushing a hand through his hair and letting his head fall back against the seat. “You’re right. Maybe it’s all fake. That’s comforting.”

“Uh-huh. So can we address the fact that explicitly talking about your feelings for Rebecca has you shaking? Like, straight-up emaciated-Rosario-Dawson-withdrawals-from-heroin quivers.”

“Am I?” he asks, dully registering the _Rent_ reference and frowning with distaste.

“Yeah, dude. I’m looking for any excuse to get out of the car so I can stop witnessing it.”

“Oh, god,” he says, leaning forward again and banging his head gently against the steering wheel.

After a long moment, he feels Heather’s hand patting his shoulder. “There, there.”

“Very comforting; thank you.”

Heather _hmm_ s. Then, after a long minute passes and his breathing remains inconsistent, she starts to chuckle to herself.

“What about this is funny to you?” Nathaniel asks, twisting his head to shoot daggers at her.

“Just that, like, at least the fact that she’s totally fucked up isn’t an obstacle for you and Rebecca because you’re much more of a mess than she is.”

He blinks. “You think I’m that fucked up? Really?”

She bugs her eyes at him. “Unquestionably.”

“Huh.” If Heather—perceptive and straight-shooting Heather—thinks so, there’s gotta be something to that. “Shit.”

Her chuckles morph into full-blown laughter.

He watches her for a second before an unbalanced titter pops out from between his lips. And just like that, they’re both cackling over how big of a disaster he is.

Nathaniel feels the panic release its grip on his larynx.

But, even with the weight lifted, he still lets out an undignified squawk when someone raps on the driver’s side window.

“What’s going on in here?” Rebecca asks. “I’ve been looking for you for five minutes, Heather. It’s almost sundown.”

Nathaniel blinks, wanting to force his eyes away from her face but finding himself unable.

“Right,” Heather says, coughing over her straggling giggles. “Coming.”

“Me too,” he says quietly.

“Well, that’s the least you can do,” she says, not looking him in the eye. “Since you messed yesterday up.”

“Mm, yeah,” Heather says, “That’s what the kids are calling it these days.”

Nathaniel has to resist the urge to push her out of the car.

“Shut up, Heather,” Rebecca says, her eyes finding his for a split second before she turns and starts marching back toward the house. She’s not quick enough to stop him from noticing the blush rising in her cheeks, though.

He feels the color start to pool in his own in response.

###

###

“He’s talking up your friend, that’s not a good sign.”

Rebecca jerks her attention away from Nathaniel and Heather, who are sitting on the couch looking completely cozy, like she’s just been caught doing something indecent. Which is ridiculous, of course, because she’s supposed to be able to stare longingly at Nathaniel all she wants. That’s what twenty percent of all relationships—or fake relationships—is. Watching the other person when they’re not watching you back. Or something.

“God, you scared me. How are you so agile for such an—” Rebecca swallows down the word _old_ off Naomi’s incensed expression. “—experienced woman?”

“Terrible recovery,” Naomi says, tutting her disapproval.

“Yeah.”

“I have all the elegance of a ballet dancer. Grace is in my blood.” Naomi grabs Rebecca’s chin. “Too bad the genes skipped a generation, hmm?”

“Be honest: you planned this whole trip because you were going through punching bag withdrawal, right? You do seem to be losing a little definition in your arms.”

“Always so self-centered,” Naomi says, shaking her head. “You know I planned this trip because I want to spend at least _one_ meaningful part of the year with my daughter, and since she doesn’t love me enough to come home for Passover, I have to make compromises.”

Rebecca feels her hands curl into talons, ready to take out eyes. “Oh, my god.”

“You know he’s out of your league,” Naomi says, and even though she lowers her voice and nods toward the couch, it still takes Rebecca a long moment to catch up with the sudden shift in topic.

“So what?” she asks, feeling a defensive heat pricking up the back of her neck.

“So, he’s rich, he’s attractive. He could have any woman he wants, and you expect me to believe he picked you?”

“I—” Rebecca starts to say, but the heat has permeated her skin and she can feel it like lava solidifying in her throat.

“I think you need to consider the possibility that he’s being unfaithful,” Naomi continues as if she hadn’t made a sound.

Rebecca swallows hard. “With my friend? God, Mom.”

“With anyone he wants.”

“Okay, well, you couldn’t be more wrong.”

Naomi raises her eyebrows.

“Look, I know you don’t believe two people can genuinely just care about each other and you think that everyone has an ulterior motive, but just because it applies to you, doesn’t mean—”

“I don’t always have an ulterior motive,” Naomi says, her voice a tick too loud. Even though Rebecca’s not looking, she can still feel Heather and Nathaniel’s attention redirect.

“—doesn’t mean it’s true of my relationship, okay?” she says, lowering her own voice to a hushed growl. “Nathaniel cares about me, and he wouldn’t cheat, and…he cares about me, so. There.”

Naomi gives a disbelieving huff in response as Nathaniel approaches the kitchen islet.

“Hey,” he says, walking up to Rebecca and wrapping his arms around her without hesitation.

“Hi,” she says back, leaning into him even as she feels a confused gurgle in the pit of her stomach.

“Everything okay?” he asks her, pressing his lips into the side of her head.

Naomi harrumphs, but Rebecca says, “Yeah, it’s fine.”

“So are we doing this thing?” Heather asks, leaning into the islet and tapping her short nails against the marble.

“We’re doing this,” Rebecca says, grabbing her menorah and the box of candles.

Nathaniel’s hands skim along her sides as she steps out of the circle of his arms, like he’s unwilling to let her go, and tingles bloom on the surface of her skin.

She walks perhaps a little slower than necessary over to the windows on the far side of the living room, trying to see if he’ll reach out for her again.

He doesn’t.

“Your menorah has cobwebs on it,” Naomi comments, leaning against the wall next to her and watching as Rebecca fits the candles into each arm.

“Your vagina has cobwebs,” she snipes back under her breath.

“Do you even remember all the blessings?” Naomi asks, either oblivious to the dig or uncharacteristically choosing to ignore it in the spirit of the holiday.

Rebecca rolls her eyes. “Of course.”

“Can you speak Hebrew?” Heather asks from where she’s perched on the arm of the couch behind them.

“Not well,” Naomi answers for her.

“Now that I’m being forced to graduate, I’m really regretting not studying a language,” Heather says, voice quiet and introspective.

“Yeah, I bet Spanish would be coming in handy about now,” Nathaniel says.

Rebecca turns away from the window in time to see Heather aiming a kick at his shin.

“Because of how many people speak it nationally these days,” he says, sliding gracefully out of reach. “Obviously.”

Naomi elbows Rebecca, who resists the urge to scream at all of them.

“Let’s light these puppies,” she says instead, wincing at the false cheer in her voice and pulling her lighter out from where she’d tucked it in her bra. “Mom, you wanna do the honors?”

Naomi accepts the lighter, gives Rebecca a meaningful look, and then starts reciting the first night blessing. Rebecca joins in, saying the words under her breath in a show of minor defiance—and so her mom won’t critique her Hebrew, which, admittedly, is a little rusty.

They stand in silence afterward, watching the two candles burn.

Moments from the past year seem to flicker to life in the dancing flames, and, unexpectedly, Rebecca feels tears prick in her eyes for how much has come to pass, for how much changed.

She thinks of the darkness she’d huddled in while trying to avoid that change as long as she possibly could. She thinks of the light she’d invited into her life that, little by little, forced the shadows to recede.

The sudden urge to reach for her mom’s hand wells inside her. She even feels her fingers twitch, ready for the movement. At the last second, though, she casts her arm out to Nathaniel, who—as if he’d been waiting for the invitation all along—steps closer and locks his fingers between hers.

With a sigh, Rebecca lets her head fall to his shoulder. As long as he’s playing the role of the supportive and affectionate boyfriend, she might as well take advantage. Who knows when agitated, cold Nathaniel will step back in to take his place.

“Gifting is a part of the holiday, yes?” he asks, his voice low.

“Hmm?”

“I, uh, have something for you.” He clears his throat, and then raises his voice, “For both of you, actually.”

“For me?” Naomi asks.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh, please,” she says. “Call me, Naomi.”

Rebecca snorts at how immediately the possibility of gifts warms her.

“Sure,” he says, with a sly grin directed at Rebecca.

She feels herself smiling back automatically.

Still grinning, he produces two small velvet boxes from his pocket, checks inside one of them—taking care to angle the box away from Rebecca so she can’t peek—and then holds out one to each of them.

Inside hers, Rebecca discovers a pair of striking arctic-blue diamond studs in the shape of stars. Her head snaps back up to find Nathaniel watching her take them in. She feels her stomach do a sudden-elevator-drop style swoop.

“This is lovely,” she says.

“Gorgeous,” Naomi agrees, looking at her own present. She leans into Rebecca’s shoulder to see what she got, and then lets out a pleased coo. “What do you know? We match.”

Inside Naomi’s jewelry box is a pair of moon-shaped studs, rendered in a rich cobalt color that almost exactly matches her mom’s eyes.

“Huh. Guess we kinda do,” Rebecca says, keeping her voice neutral.

“I got you a gift, too,” Heather says.

“You did?” Rebecca asks, turning in surprise.

Heather tosses her something—a bag of chocolate coins, she realizes only after she’s caught it.

“This is perfect,” she says, cradling both presents against her chest. “Thanks, you guys.”

“Anytime, dude,” Heather says.

“I think I know what we’re doing next,” Naomi says.

“What’s that?” Rebecca asks.

“I’m going to go put on my new earrings, and you are going to find us a deck of cards.”

“Mom, no. Come on.”

“It’s tradition,” Naomi says, planting her hands on her hips.

“What is?” Heather asks.

Rebecca squeezes her eyes shut. “It’s a Garfinkel tradition to play cards on the first night of Hanukkah. Except we only know how to play one game, and we actually haven’t done it since I was in college.”

“Fine,” Naomi says petulantly, “it was a tradition. But we could make it one again. Don’t you want to do your part to repair our estrangement?”

Even though she’s laying it on far too thick, Rebecca still feels a responding tug in her chest. “Fine,” she says, “Let’s do it.”

“What are we doing?” Nathaniel asks. “Which game do you know how to play?”

She sighs. “Go fish.”

###

“So,” Naomi says after the cards have been dealt. “You never got to tell me the story about how you two met.”

Rebecca glances over at Nathaniel. His eyes have already found her, and a sly smile unfurls on his lips when she meets his stare.

“Would you like to tell your mother,” he asks, “or should I?”

“Tell me what?” Naomi asks.

“I _may_ have physically assaulted Nathaniel within the first week of knowing him,” Rebecca says, bracing herself for a Naomi lecture.

“Why would you do something like that?” Naomi demands.

“Rebecca’s whimsical that way,” Heather says. Then, “Do you have any sixes?”

“Go fish,” Rebecca says after checking her hand.

“She was actually taking up a very noble cause,” Nathaniel says. “Well, mostly noble.”

“Um, excuse me,” Rebecca says. “In what way is busting my butt to make sure people get to keep their jobs only _mostly_ noble?”

“Some of those people definitely deserved to be fired.”

She shakes her head. “You got any jacks?”

“I’ll tell you once you admit I’m right.”

Rebecca holds out her hand. “Give it to me.”

He huffs, but tosses the card across the table. Then he turns back to Naomi. “My family’s firm had just taken over Whitefeather, and we were trying to work up a healthier budget. Rebecca made a passionate case against our methods.”

“I can’t believe you just corporate-jargon’d Rebecca almost gouging your eye out with a pen,” Heather says.

“You did what?” Naomi asks, her eyes bugging.

“It was the passion,” Rebecca says, gesturing across to Nathaniel.

Naomi turns to look at him, too. “So you really don’t care how much of a handful this one is, do you?”

“God, Mom,” Rebecca says, a shriek in her voice.

“It’s part of her charm,” Nathaniel says, sounding almost bashful as he glances at her and away again quickly. “Got any aces?”

Naomi’s watching him with something closer and closer to begrudging respect. Rebecca swallows hard.

“I thought you’d never ask,” Naomi says, passing them along.

###

As the night wears on, Naomi gets warmer and warmer toward Nathaniel. Rebecca’s not sure what’s wrong with her—given that having him win her mom’s begrudging approval had been the plan all along—but every time Naomi laughs at one of his jokes or complements, she feels her stomach tense.

Around the same time the candles in the menorah snuff out, Naomi pushes away from the table and announces, “I need to rest now or I’ll be worthless tomorrow.”

“That’s too bad,” Nathaniel says, putting on a pout that makes Rebecca roll her eyes. “I wasn’t done admiring your technique.”

Naomi appreciates it, though. She pats his cheek and smiles beneficently. “A lady needs her beauty sleep.”

“Night, Mom,” Rebecca says pointedly. Naomi waves over her shoulder dismissively as she goes to leave.

Once the door to Rebecca’s room falls audibly shut behind her, Rebecca leans over to smack him on the arm.

“Ow, what was that for?”

Rebecca plucks the safest answer to that question out from the confused mess in the pit of her stomach.

“You got us matching gifts?”

He raises an eyebrow at her, infuriatingly smug. “You didn’t like the earrings?”

“No,” she says, hearing the petulance in her voice, “they were beautiful and they totally go with the dress I have picked out for Heather’s graduation.”

Heather groans. “Don’t remind me.”

“And Naomi definitely liked them, so thanks—good job soothing the dragon with something shiny. But, god, why did they have to match? She was way too happy about that.”

“Did it ever occur to you that was the reason I picked them?”

“To please my mom and irritate me?”

“Behold my success,” he says with a smirk.

“I hate you,” she tells him, though the statement is at odds with the sharp pang of…something she feels in the center of her chest.

“So you’ve made abundantly clear,” he says, like he’s in on her secret.

The pang grows more severe.

“Are we gonna, like, play cards?” Heather asks, and Rebecca starts. She’d almost forgotten about her entirely. “Because if not, I have much better things to do than sit here and watch you flirt.”

“I cannot take even another round of go fish,” Rebecca says, feeling heat in her cheeks.

“We could try blackjack,” Heather suggests. “I’ve always wanted to test my card counting skills.”

“You know how to count cards?” Nathaniel asks.

Heather shrugs. “Not necessarily, but I aced my statistics class. So.”

“I think it’s a little more complicated than that,” he says.

“How would you know?” Heather asks. “You refuse to take even the surest of gambles.”

She says the word with exaggerated importance, and a memory floats past Rebecca, too far below the surface for her to grab. Still, she feels a twinge in the pit of her stomach.

“So, what are you going to do with your life now that you’re too poor to go to school?” Nathaniel asks, goading.

Heather flicks a card at him from across the table. “Start charging you for my services as confidant and therapist.”

“I’ll need to see a degree first,” he says, shaking his head with mock regret.

“Hey, too bad you’re not going for your master’s, huh, Heather?” Rebecca says, clumsily but determinedly inserting herself into their back-and-forth.

“I actually thought about continuing ed,” she says with a sigh.

Rebecca frowns. “What stopped you?”

“Costs money,” Heather says.

“Actually,” Nathaniel says, “you can get most tuition costs waived if you’re working for the university.”

That perks Heather up, and Rebecca’s not sure at which of them the stab of jealousy she feels is directed.

“How do you know?”

“I know some people in UC admissions—a couple different branches actually. I could put you in contact with them.”

“Yeah, I’d—yeah,” Heather says.

“Aw, look at that,” Rebecca says. “You made Heather speechless.”

“Shut up,” Heather says, flicking a card at Rebecca this time. She’s smiling as she does it.

“I’ll just set myself a reminder,” Nathaniel says, taking out his phone.

“Thanks,” Heather says, still grinning.

Rebecca watches Heather watching Nathaniel, Naomi’s warning suddenly ticking through her mind.

“Oh,” Nathaniel says suddenly, making Rebecca jolt. “Excuse me. I should take this.” He flashes his ringing phone at them before getting up from the table and stepping outside on the porch.

“I am gonna go look up UCLA’s graduate program,” Heather says, excusing herself from the table, too.

Rebecca grunts her acknowledgement.

She sits in silence for a moment before gathering up the cards and sliding the deck in its little box. She pushes in all the chairs around the table, and throws away the foil from her chocolate coins.

Since Nathaniel still hasn’t come back inside, she pokes her head out.

He’s sitting on the futon out there.

“Hey,” she says as she approaches.

He nods, sneaking a glance at her as she sits down next to him and then looking away again. “Hi.”

“Was that your dad?” she guesses.

“Mother, actually,” he says. “Though she was instructed to call with a message from him, so I guess it’s not much of a difference.”

He doesn’t offer anything else and, faced with the tense silence that settles around them, Rebecca finds herself blurting, “It was supposed to be a prank!”

He looks at her again, eyebrows high on his forehead. “Hm?”

“The fire. Josh. It was supposed to be a prank.”

She’d gotten the impression he wanted to know more, so the fact that he suddenly looks distant and angry catches her by surprise.

“I don’t need the details.”

Part of her shrinks back at his testiness, but the larger part—that part that’s been practicing how to own her past for all that it is for the better part of the year—rallies.

“I’d like to give them to you anyway,” she says, resting a hand tentatively on his thigh. “If you’ll listen. I don’t want to force it on you.”

He visibly loosens at her touch, and Rebecca flashes back to Maya and Darryl’s teasing from the day before.

Then she’s thinking of the kiss again, and her heart leaps up into her throat.

“Okay,” Nathaniel says, and she almost misses it, in the midst of the rush of memory. “Go ahead. Justify yourself.”

“Alright, well, you may or may not have noticed, but Josh is kind of an idiot.”

A surprised, short laugh escapes Nathaniel, and Rebecca grins to herself, pleased.

“I thought you thought he was perfect.”

She takes in a deep breath and lets it out in a gust. “Once upon a time, I thought he held the key to unlocking my happiness. But that’s not really relevant to this story.”

Nathaniel narrows his eyes but shifts, angling his body toward her. “It’s not?”

She moves her hand—draping her arm around the back of the futon—and mirrors him. “Not as relevant as you might think.”

“Okay.”

“This story is about how Josh Chan thinks the Holy Spirit is, like, a Halloween ghost.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“Wasn’t he trying to join the priesthood?” Nathaniel asks incredulously.

“Dedicated over half a year to making it happen.”

“Why are you in love with this guy, again?”

The present tense catches Rebecca in the stomach. “Was.”

“Was what?”

“I _was_ in love with him,” she says. “I’m not anymore.”

Nathaniel scrutinizes her for a moment, like he’s looking for any hint that she’s playing with him. She stares back like she has nothing to hide.

“What happened to him being the man of your dreams?”

Rebecca winces. “Well, for one thing, he left me at the altar.”

For some reason, this explanation seems to shock him. Before she can comment, though, he asks, “And for another?”

She nods. “For another, we actually sat through a long, priest-mediated, post-wedding debrief that helped us both realize we’d been in the relationship for all the wrong reasons.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“So where does the fire fit in?”

“Well, just because we’d worked through some stuff, didn’t mean I wasn’t still angry and hurt. So when I heard that Josh was finally calling it on the whole becoming a priest thing, I saw an opportunity to embarrass him. Not on the scale he’d embarrassed me, but still. I thought a little tit for tat would help me move on.”

“And it worked seamlessly, I take it.”

Rebecca rolls her eyes to the sky, unable to stifle a giggle. “Went off without a single hitch.”

“Uh-huh.”

“No, so the plan was to dress up like a ghost, sneak onto his front lawn, get a small, controlled fire going for effect, and shame Josh for his lack of follow-through as the Holy Spirit.”

“A perfectly reasonable plan.”

“Yeah, well, I have impulse issues, okay? It seemed doable, and that was good enough for me at the time.”

Nathaniel’s eyebrows twitch with surprise or amusement or maybe a little of both, and Rebecca feels a beyond-control fire catch in her heart.

She coughs lightly. “Suffice it to say, the fire stopped being small or controlled pretty quickly, and I panicked and decided that getting in my car and driving as fast as I could with all the windows down to put out the fire was the only logical recourse.”

“Christ.”

Rebecca points at his face. “Exactly.”

He swats her hand away, laughing.

“Anyway, that’s the whole, ridiculous tale.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“It really was just a prank, wasn’t it?”

She shakes her head at him. “As I said.”

“So you’re truly not interested in Josh anymore?”

Rebecca’s heart gives a little lurch at his need for assurance because, for the first time since they’d crashed unceremoniously into each other’s lives, she can actually guess at the thoughts running through his mind. The knowledge warms her from the inside out.

She likes his heart peeking out on his sleeve—it’s a good look for him.

“Not in the least.”

He smiles at her for a moment, then licks his lips like he can smooth it away. “I, um, I appreciate your explanation.”

She pats him on the arm. “I appreciate you listening.”

He opens his mouth to say something else, then falters, a pained expression on his face. “Why didn’t you tell me about it when it happened?”

Rebecca frowns, her mind automatically offering up those well-worn memories she keeps tucked away within easy reach—the ‘don’t get too attached to Nathaniel’ memories. She drops her eyes to her lap.

“We weren’t really on speaking terms.”

He doesn’t respond for a long moment. “Of course. Right.”

Though the silence that settles over them still crackles with tension, Rebecca doesn’t rush to fill it this time.

Nathaniel’s the one to eventually break it. “I should get going. It’s late.”

“Okay,” Rebecca agrees, shaking off her ruminations on the past.

They stand from the futon at the same time, leaving them too close.

“Um,” he starts, clearly flustered by the proximity. His eyes are on her lips, and Rebecca tilts her chin up a little, waiting for whatever comes next. He swallows hard—her eyes follow his Adam’s apple. “Goodnight.”

He starts to walk away and, spurned by disappointment, Rebecca says, “But you’re forgetting something.”

He pauses, turns. “What’s that?”

She licks her lips. “A goodnight kiss.”

He hesitates, and she’s back in his apartment, about to be kicked out for taking too many liberties.

“Never—” she starts to say, but then he’s grabbing for her with one hand, fingers curling around the back of her neck and palm cupping her cheek. He draws her into him and she goes eagerly and then he’s kissing her with a tender determination that kindles a smoldering bonfire in the pit of her stomach.

She can feel the soft burn in her cheeks and on her lips even after he pulls away.

“Goodnight,” he whispers.

He’s gone before she’s managed to open her eyes.

###

Back inside, Rebecca makes her way to Heather’s room, pausing at the door to knock lightly.

“Rebecca?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

A long sigh. “Ugh, fine, come in.”

She slips inside, gingerly pushes the door closed behind her, and then leans against the wall. “How’s the research going?”

“Rabbit hole,” Heather says in response, not looking up from her laptop.

“Hey, so,” Rebecca starts, still feeling lightheaded from the kiss. “I wanted to ask you something.”

Heather does glance up then, curiosity piqued by the Rebecca’s hesitance, no doubt. “Okay.”

Rebecca shifts her weight, the pleasant warmth of her goodbye with Nathaniel starting to give way to the nerves zinging all around her stomach.

“Are you planning to ask it tonight, or…?”

She shakes her head—not an answer to Heather’s question, just to try and loosen the vise uncertainty has on her throat long enough to get some words out—and then says, louder than Heather’s expecting judging by her taken-aback reaction, “Hey, Mom?”

“What?” Naomi calls back immediately, her squawking voice carrying through the wall easily.

“Happy Hanukkah!”

Naomi doesn’t say anything back, but Rebecca still feels her make an offensive gesture in their direction.

With that confirmed, she hops onto the bed.

“Oh, okay,” Heather says, scooting over to one side to make room. “We’re doing this now.”

Once she’s settled, Rebecca gets out her phone and opens a text.

_You and Nathaniel have been getting pretty close._

Heather’s phone buzzes on the nightstand closest to Rebecca, so she grabs it and tosses it into Heather’s lap.

Heather groans but picks it up.

Rebecca watches her face closely. Her eyebrows tick up, but she remains otherwise impassive.

Rebecca’s phone chimes in her hand.

_That’s not a question_.

“Heather,” Rebecca whines out loud, drawing out the final _r_.

She laughs, but types out something else: _I can’t believe you’re actually jealous right now._

Rebecca looks up after reading to find Heather crossing her eyes at her. She gives a reluctant laugh.

But then the image of them laughing together in Nathaniel’s car and lounging together on the couch hit her—a one-two punch—and she turns back to her phone.

_You’re the only person who knows this is all fake, so it’s not like you have to hide your feelings for my sake. You two seem to get along really well and if you did like him, I’d tell you to…_

Heather leans into her shoulder to see what’s taking so long, shaking her head as she reads. Before Rebecca’s finished typing out her message, her phone chimes with an incoming text: a string of barfing emojis.

Rebecca’s laugh is breathy and relieved this time, but she still finds herself asking, “Really?”

“Um, yeah,” Heather says, like Rebecca’s a complete moron. “Dude’s an absolute disaster, and even though that’s apparently my friend type—” She pauses to ruffle Rebecca’s hair. “—I’d sooner eat off the dirty dishes you leave in the sink than make out with that.”

“Okay,” Rebecca says, smiling as she combs her hands through her hair. “Good.”

“Besides,” Heather says, “we both know this is about as fake my impending college degree.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Heather lets out a weary sigh so dramatic, Rebecca’s surprised she doesn’t deflate. “I’m not playing this game.”

“I told him about the Holy Spirit incident,” Rebecca says after a moment, watching her hands as she flips her phone over and over.

“And?”

“He was…surprisingly cool about it.”

“Huh,” Heather says. “Wonder why that would be.”

Rebecca rolls her eyes but can’t hide her smile for more than a second. After a beat, her head snaps up. “Hey.”

“What?”

“You’ve been unsurprisingly cool—driving me places I need to go, handling the grocery shopping.”

“Putting up with all your gross habits like not washing the dishes.”

“That too,” Rebecca agrees. “That too.”

“You’re welcome.”

She smiles and leans into Heather, resting her head on her friend’s shoulder. “Thank you.”

They sit like that for a long time before Heather speaks again. “You still can’t sleep in my bed with me.”

“But the couch is so uncomfortable,” Rebecca whines.

“I don’t care, not happening.”

“Fine,” Rebecca says, begrudgingly moving off the bed.

“Remember to put a pillow between your knees for better spinal alignment,” Heather says as she’s leaving.

“Fuck you,” Rebecca responds immediately.

She can hear Heather’s snickering even after she’s closed the door behind her.


End file.
